Reading fiction helps us learn

I ran across an arti­cle the other day in The Rotar­ian mag­a­zine titled, The Truth About Fic­tion, and nat­u­rally I was intrigued.

Cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist Keith Oat­ley found in a recent study that “read­ing more fic­tion enables you to under­stand other peo­ple bet­ter. ” Unlike non­fic­tion that tells the reader what hap­pened, “fic­tion tells us what can hap­pen.” Oat­ley explains that peo­ple who read fic­tion scored bet­ter at inter­pret­ing facial expres­sions and social cues, were less socially iso­lated and had more social sup­port than non-fiction read­ers. Busi­ness schools are real­iz­ing that being able to under­stand other peo­ple is impor­tant, and a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor teaches a course on lead­er­ship using War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy as his text.

By let­ting the reader see how peo­ple inter­act and by shoring up the abil­ity to imag­ine what another per­son is think­ing or feel­ing, “fic­tion lets our brains try out new per­spec­tives.” Oat­ley has shown in his exper­i­ments that fic­tion “mea­sur­ably enhances our abil­i­ties to empathize with other peo­ple and con­nect with some­thing larger than ourselves.”

The Delaware County Dis­trict Library has thou­sands and thou­sands of fic­tion books on its shelves — from his­tor­i­cal fic­tion to romance to police pro­ce­du­rals to mys­ter­ies to sci­ence fic­tion to real­is­tic fic­tion. I am cer­tain that there is a won­der­ful book sit­ting on the Library’s shelves that would be suit you to a T.

These new fic­tion books will be on the shelves of the Delaware County Dis­trict Library dur­ing the month of March. Of course, this is just a small sam­pling of the hun­dreds of new books that will be added to the Library’s col­lec­tion this month, and our librar­i­ans are always ready to help find the per­fect book for you. Enjoy!

•The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. After a lynch­ing in a nearby town is cov­ered up, a hor­ri­fy­ing chain of events begins to hap­pen in early 20th-century Prince­ton, New Jersey.

•Death of Yes­ter­day by M.C. Beaton. Sergeant Hamish Mac­beth pays no mind to a both­er­some woman who went out drink­ing and for­got all the events of the evening, until she turns up mur­dered in this lat­est novel in the mys­tery series.

•The Gate Thief by Orson Scott Card. Danny North poses as an every­day high school stu­dent while hold­ing the stolen out­selves of thir­teen cen­turies of gatemages and learn­ing about why Loki closed the Great Gates, an effort that is com­pli­cated by a near-powerless Wad’s efforts to make peace.

•The Guardian by Bev­erly Lewis. After school­teacher Jodi Win­field finds a lit­tle girl on the side of the road, she delves into the iso­lated com­mu­nity of the Lan­caster Old Order Amish to find answers.

•Ice Cold Kill by Dana Haynes. Work­ing as an inter­preter for the FBI and tak­ing occa­sional free­lance oper­a­tive jobs, Daria, a for­mer Shin-Bet agent in exile in the U.S., receives an anony­mous warn­ing just before she is set up to walk into an ambush.

•Red Vel­vet Cup­cake Mur­der by Joanne Fluke. When one of her famous Red Vel­vet cup­cakes is thought to have caused the death of her rival—a scan­dalous Lake Eden leg­end who was try­ing to steal her boyfriend—Hannah Swensen becomes the unlikely sus­pect in a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion and must whip up the real killer before some­one else gets iced.

•Robert Ludlum’s The Utopia Exper­i­ment by Kyle Mills. While assess­ing the mil­i­tary poten­tial of a new intel­li­gence device, Covert-One’s Colonel Jon Smith real­izes the tech­nol­ogy must never fall into the hands of America’s enemies.

•Six Years by Har­lan Coben. Har­bor­ing an endur­ing love for Natalie six years after her mar­riage to another man, Jake Sanders learns of his rival’s death and attends the funeral only to dis­cover that Natalie is not the woman she seemed to be, a sit­u­a­tion that com­pels a deter­mined search for answers.

•The Striker by Clive Cus­sler and Justin Scott. After wit­ness­ing a ter­ri­ble coal min­ing acci­dent, Detec­tive Isaac Bell hunts for the high-level sabo­teurs he believes are respon­si­ble in this new novel.

•Sweet Tea Revenge by Laura Childs. Tea shop owner and brides­maid Theo­dosia Brown­ing inves­ti­gates when the groom is lit­er­ally late on the cou­ples’ big day in the lat­est novel in the series fol­low­ing Agony of the Leaves.

•Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzger­ald by Therese Anne Fowler. A tale inspired by the mar­riage of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzger­ald fol­lows their union in defi­ance of her father’s oppo­si­tion and her aban­don­ment of the provin­cial fin­ery of her upbring­ing in favor of a scan­dalous flap­per iden­tity that gains her entry into the lit­er­ary party scenes of New York, Paris and the French Riviera.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Mar 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.