Can reading make you happier? (2015)

Reading, to me, is the best method to learn empathy. We all read differently, in our own headspace, but then need to distill that view through the godhead of a fictional character. Movies and TV can't touch that slow drip of mindcopy a book provides. TV we witness, books we live alongside. Often I'm stuck in the personality of a book for weeks at a time, and it's impossible for the experience not to leave a footprint.

Happiness I've found easiest to achieve with that empathy. Understand those around you and know your place in the world and what is and is not possible to change. Being malleable in a group while still retaining a sense of self provides a way to travel and adapt in whatever situation you find. Only books provided me with enough experience to "know" myself and how I'd react in certain scenarios.

I don't think it matters much what you read. Whatever challenges you and gets you to see the world slightly askew.

I spent so many hours reading books as a child and feel that my world is larger and richer for it. But even so I'd like to go back and whisper in my little ear, put down the book for a while and go outside and read the world with every sense and then write on it with every tool you can find or make. I love books but have hidden in them as much as built on them. All good things can be abused.

Reading is widely, massively promoted in schools, for all the right intentions (it really is a very important and enriching foundational skill), but to such an overwhelming extent that we sometimes forget that reading is a form of consumption, not a truly unalloyed good. The art of consumption - whether media, food, sex, resources, or otherwise - is in consuming the right amount of the right stuff.

I have seen that some activities tire you out, while others do not.

Reading, slowly but steadily, tires me. I might then need to doze off for a few minutes to resume.

Certain other activities, on the other hand, keeps me awake, like mindless browsing, programming (especially at the beginning of a project), OS installation, and even (please do not laugh at this) filing taxes.

Why is it so? (This question in my mind has been long unanswered, so any inputs or suggestions are welcome).

Won’t even pretend to have read the article, but I’ll recommend the last book to really make me existentially happy and which helped me out of a bout of depression: The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem. If you liked Gödel, Escher, Bach then I suspect you’ll enjoy it. It’s whimsical but quite deep.

> "In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks."

Wow.

I have thought about this, too. It has helped me understand and empathize with people loving and embracing Gods.

It is common to love Harry Potter even if he doesn’t exist. If some people starts loving a God based on scriptures, even if that God doesn’t exist in the physical plane, the love isn’t non-existent. It might be pure, too. I am Indian, and we have rich mythologies somewhat like the Greeks and the Nords. And, I felt that if people begins to love physically non-existent being, that love might help in tough times, give people peace, etc.

I have read a lot, throughout my life, although little has stuck :).

I have felt that, among other things, reading is also a means to escape, from anxiety, from the need to plan and structure your time and from the expectation to engage with others (particularly if you are an introvert). It is a lot like heavy drinking in that aspect (Oops)...

As a non-religious person, I have found a lot of “meaning” in reading literary fiction. I don’t know if it has made me happier, but it has definitely scratched an existential itch.

There has actually been studies on that. "Does Reading Literature Make People Happy?" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334901338_Does_Read...

This study suggests that the reading induced flow state is the main reason for increased happiness.

Funny books seems like an overlooked category. Maybe we can get a list going.

Here are two:

Candide, and The Pilgrims Progress.

This is really about whether reading highbrow fiction specifically can make you happier.

I find it odd. Fiction was created as and remains fundamentally a form of entertainment. It’s like asking if watching Netflix can make you happier. Yes sure but not usually deeply.

This is just another symptom of how we’ve made literature precious, and appreciating it almost religious, certainly a form of snobbery. The New Yorker will write an article like this on “bibliotherapy” but never take seriously the idea you can get the same affect from binge watching the Sopranos.

When I’m stuck on a problem, I find that re-reading some relevant documentation slowly is relaxing, and often I’m happy to get something I didn’t get the first time, and might need soon!

Reading the Mistborn trilogy has made me happy in ways that are hard to quantify.

The first book drags in the middle, and the trilogy as a whole drags in the second book, but they're not impossible to read

Listening to audiobooks has definitely made me happier. I don't even watch tv that much anymore, listening books has taken TV's place for me.

Depends.

If you're reading the same old normative low-entropy "old-school soap opera" things (even if it's not a novel), you'll be fine.

If you step out of the bubble, it becomes painful to the point of destroying/changing your life.

Eg. real history of India that is outside the totally controlled colonial outposts of London/NY, and how closely the European moves till date matches what they were doing in classical non-Xtian Rome (many projects to this day are named after the genocidal Xtian "saints" from back then.).

Yes. IF you read the right things!

Obviously depends on what you read...

> innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence.

No offense, but what the hell is this.

"You’ve read your last free article." -- no happiness for me :(

Knowledge increases suffering