I love reading. I love learning about different things, whether about a period in history, how to craft something new, exploring a particular person’s expertise, or learning how to cook an interesting dish. But even more than that, I love delving into a piece of good fiction.

In this lifetime, I have chosen to live a particular life: one that intimately involves a specific set of people residing in this particular place who live in a certain manner. Reading fiction allows me to live hundreds of other possible lives, even if only for the short time I’m immersed in their story.

A well-written book can help my soul learn what it’s like to stand in another person’s shoes. It can enable me to envision a different world, for better or for worse, and cause me to modify my actions in order to help create or avoid a particular outcome.

Good fiction, like all good art, disturbs something within us. It presents us with the everyday world that we encounter without really seeing it, and somehow makes it more visible, more explicit, and less mundane. The work highlights something or shifts something slightly, and allows us to gain insights as a result.

When reading fiction, I don’t feel compelled to analyze and or be skeptical, as I often approach a work of non-fiction. Instead, I can drop my intellectual guard and simply be carried along with the story. I think this is what makes fiction so powerful – it can reach inside our hearts in a way that non-fiction cannot.

So spend a few (or many!) guilt-free minutes today curled up with a novel. Fiction reading doesn’t have to be considered something light and fluffy; it too can bring about growth and change.