three months ago i started a reading
challenge
and the goal was to read about one book
a week and in that time i read about a
dozen books
and many of them were fiction this
really surprised me because i've never
really been
a fiction reader as a science graduate i
thought the fiction books were just
elaborate stories
and that i could better use my time by
sticking to non-fiction or self-help
learning about things like history
business and even more science
but it wasn't until i started reading
more fiction books so i realized how
enjoyable they could be how they could
draw you in like an addictive video game
and how you can relate to the characters
as if you were a close friend
they were more than just elaborate
stories these novels were
representations of complex relationships
universal struggles that you and i would
face today and insights to both the
moral and wicked capacity
of humans reading fiction was not only
helping me form portraits of a world
that i never experienced before
but it was changing the way i thought
about my real day-to-day life
hey guys welcome back to the channel if
you're new here i'm sebastian a medical
student from australia
and in this video i'll be sharing what
i've learned so far in my book reading
challenge
i'll explain how fiction has changed the
way i think about things
the benefits of reading fiction and
share some of my favorite novels in the
past three months
how fiction is changing the way i think
so a few months back when i read the
faults in our stars by john green
yes i know i'm a little bit of a
hopeless romantic but
when i was reading it i really started
to feel the joy that came
with these newfound friendships with
newfound love i just started to
feel the sadness and the pain that a lot
of the characters were going through
although i didn't have a lived
experience of cancer like the characters
in the novel it made me think back to
times in my life where i've seen family
members go
through struggles through sickness how
they persevered how they won or lost
their battles
there was a quote from the book that
really stood out to me i cannot tell you
how thankful i am for our little
infinity
i wouldn't trade it for the world you
gave me a forever within the number days
and i'm grateful for many of us we get
caught up in our assignments
increasing workloads relationship
problems and it's quotes like these that
make you really stop
and think about what you should be
grateful for fiction also allows you to
see the world from a fresh perspective
one that's free from your own biases
your own prejudices
when i was reading the novel white fang
by jack london it was written from the
perspective of a wolf
london portrays an icy barren landscape
where everybody's fighting for survival
and the issues and the mysteries that
trouble this lone wolf
mirror many of our own mysteries he had
no conscious knowledge of death
but like every animal in the wild he
possessed the instinct of death
it was the very essence of the unknown
it was the sum of the terrors of the
unknown
about which he knew nothing and about
which he feared everything
death is a universal leveller a fate to
all animals
and even through the story of this lone
wolf we see that
in times of hardship in times of
struggle it's all about having the
willpower to press on
to keep going even when you feel like
giving up reading novels like these
really show that fiction is more than
just a story
it's a way we can discover more about
ourselves empathize with the characters
in the novels
and think more deeply about why we value
the things that we do
the benefits of reading fiction it's a
pretty remarkable phenomenon that we can
read words from a page and then
construct mental lives of story
characters
we open up a book and gain immediate
access to the intricacies of someone
else's mind not only does it open a
window to the mind of the fictional
character
it opens up a window to our own mind as
we reflect on our own decisions
and issues facing our real social world
fiction induces the process of
simulating characters and environments
the mental social emotional factors and
feelings that these characters are going
through
and this sounds all great and all but
what is the evidence showing the
benefits of reading fiction
a meta-analysis in 2011 showed that
story processing
overlapped with many regions of the core
mentalizing network
and this core mentalizing network
consists of the medial prefrontal cortex
the posterior cingulate cortex and the
temporal parietal junction
in simple terms these are basically
regions in the brain involved with
decision-making
emotional salience and self-processing
fiction can also provide us with stories
of different cultures
countries people and offers a way that
we can learn about their social
interaction when we wouldn't have been
able to otherwise
a recent meta-analysis of 14 studies
showed that fiction readers outperformed
non-fiction and non-readers
on social cognitive tasks another
meta-analysis found that fiction reading
had a larger correlation with the social
cognitive measures
compared to non-fiction reading and so
this evidence suggests that
fiction may play a role in terms of our
ability to process emotion
and to empathize with other people in
real life there was another experiment
on undergraduate students where they got
them to read a short excerpt of the lady
with the toy dog
the experimental group experienced
significantly greater change and
self-reported experience
of personality traits and the control
group were those who read a comparison
text that had the same content
but that was written in a documentary
form in this way fiction may have a role
in facilitating
personal growth and maturation so
whether you're a fiction reader or not
there's plenty of benefits to be gained
by picking up a good fiction novel
some of my favorites so the first book
that i recommend picking up
is where the crawdads sing by delia
owens and it takes us on the story of
kya clark from 1952 to 1970 and it
shows her growing up
by herself in the swamp land somewhere
in north carolina it shows her
segregation from the rest of the town
touching on themes like social and
racial isolation
loneliness nature and personal growth
we're drawn by the character of kyle
her curiosity with the world around her
and her real love of nature
owens is able to showcase her background
as a wildlife scientist through her
vivid descriptions of
kya's universe female fireflies draw in
strange males with dishonest signals and
eat them
mantas females devour their own mates
female insects kya thought
know how to deal with their lovers so
whether you like murder mysteries coming
of age novels or romance i'd suggest
picking up where the quartets sing so
the next book that i recommend is boy
swallows universe by trent dalton
and it follows the story of eli bell a
12 year old who's found himself
in an absolutely chaotic situation from
his drug-dealing stepfather to his mute
brother to an ex-convict of a babysitter
eli has a lot on his plate he's faced
with so many challenges
family division a crime syndicate but
through it all
he's able to keep his head up high and
create a why for himself a sense of
purpose a sense of meaning for him to
get through it
you're really rooting for eli at the
very start of the novel in the last 100
pages have you absolutely hooked
it's a compelling compelling read and
something that i'd suggest picking up so
the next book that i suggest picking up
is brave new world by aldous huxley
and it was published back in 1932 and
huxley creates this dystopian world
where everybody's artificially
engineered and there's an
intelligence-based hierarchy you have
alphas betas deltas epsilons gammas and
each of them has their own role in the
hierarchy the state controls its people
by artificially creating them
and the epsilons are forced to be at the
bottom of the intelligence hierarchy
they're conditioned to like doing basic
and menial jobs
while the alphas at the top of the
hierarchy get to reap rewards from that
yet this world is an interesting one
because the state doesn't control its
people
through tyranny or fear or dictatorship
instead the
state controls its people through
happiness through the administration of
soma
which is a drug that induces the state
of pleasure and in doing so the novel
shows its conflict between happiness
and being truly free noah harari
comments on the book saying that
reading brave new world is a far more
disconcerting experience
because it is obvious that there must be
something dreadfully wrong
but you are hard pressed to put your
finger on it the world is peaceful and
prosperous
and everyone is supremely satisfied all
the time what could possibly be wrong
with that
i think in a world where everybody is
artificially happy
this puts a restriction on our freedoms
and the ability to
experience emotions and feelings that
are intrinsic to human nature
reading compelling literature
experiencing love or rooting for the
underdog in a sports match
these are all things that wouldn't be
interesting if we didn't have the
counterbalancing
emotions of boredom of loneliness of
loss
so if you're looking for a fresh new
perspective on what happiness means
i suggest picking up brave new world
well that's my three month update on my
reading challenge
and i hope i've convinced you that
reading fiction is really enjoyable and
there's also a lot of benefits to be
gained from it as well
if you're thinking of getting into
reading i'd suggest setting your own
reading goal
and if you need an accountability
partner feel free to add me as a friend
on goodreads so that we can track our
progress
i'll put my profile in the description
below if you enjoyed the video remember
to hit that like button and to subscribe
to see more content like this
thanks so much for watching and until
next time this was sebastian
stay sharp
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