Two theories about reading have just surfaced.
The first is research. Just when you think the university of the Bleedin’ Obvious can’t get any more head-bangingly banal, it does. Ready? You better sit down: Good books are good for you. Bad books aren’t. Right! Why?
Empathy. You get empathy from “literary fiction”, you don’t from “genre fiction”.
Well, I never. I suppose I’ve never been savaged by a thug wielding Middlemarch. And I’m not sure if I would trust the murderously grim James Ellroy’s fans. But it’s a needless distinction.
Still, David Kidd and Emanuele Castano, from the New School for Social Research in New York have published a paper, Different Stories: How levels of familiarity with literary and genre fiction relate to mentalising.
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