• What may sound a bit counterintuitive, is that reading fiction can provide us with self-improvement benefits, even though the stuff we read would just be a figment of someone’s imagination.
• Fictional books, poetry and other works are a form of therapy for many cent...

Reading non-fiction before bed makes us project into the future, and increases our anxiety levels.

Reading fiction does the opposite, it stokes our imagination, disengaging our mind from the day’s tensions and being conducive to a relaxing sleep.

Reading fictional tales with diverse characters makes a reader more tolerant and open-minded towards marginalized groups.

Young readers are less discriminating and more inclusive towards others who come from a different socio-economic background or look different than the...

Imagining stories activates the particular regions inside our minds that facilitate better understanding of others and seeing our surroundings with a new perspective, equivalent to putting oneself in someone else's shoes.

When we read about a situation and how someone else...

Reading fiction creates activity in the left temporal cortex region of the brain, which is associated with language.

Reading fiction helps build up our vocabulary, far more than reading non-fiction, as fictional books have a greater variety of words and phrases.

Fictional writings are diverse, uncertain and ambiguous. This leads to creating the ideal environment for creativity inside our minds. It decreases our need for cognitive closure, strengthening our mind.

Reading fiction also leads to having more evolved procedures for processing informatio...

Reading makes a large majority of people feel good, more satisfied with life.

Reading for pleasure has been able to foster even with the advent of the internet along with so many attention magnets like video games, smartphones and even Netflix. This is proof that it has so...

With just six minutes of silent reading, a person can lower their heart rate and ease the tension in their muscles by about 68 percent.

Reading puts our mind in a low gear, resting its cognitive ‘chips’ and disengaging it from active duty for a while. Reading puts our mind...