Getting a fiction fix

It’s World Book Day this week and you’ll be aware of this because a) your social media is full of TBR (to be read) stacks; and/or b) you’ve had to figure out a costume at the last minute for a small person in your life. I’ve always been a massive book nerd. I remember reading Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers under my bedcovers and avidly collecting the Baby Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High series. I’ve been a member of many book clubs. I’m in the local library regularly and have a stack of reserved titles awaiting me. I eagerly browse the shelves of charity shops and rarely come away empty handed. I generally have 3 or 4 books on the go at any one time. One of my absolute favourite things is sitting in a cafe reading or going to bed early at night with a book. For me, it’s one of the most relaxing things in life. Like many counsellors, I have a lot of psychology books an I often recommend titles to clients. The thing is, I often think that reading fiction offers a kind of therapy that might be at least as useful - or even more useful? - as reading a self-help book. Fiction offers valuable escapism and I’m sure the data must illustrate a slowing of heart rate and other signs of physiological calming. It also excites, inspires, moves. It is impossible to be immersed in a story and also hold all the thoughts of daily life at exactly the same moment. The frontal cortex must choose. Indeed, an inability to read is often an indicator of a depressed state. Clients, with a sigh of regret, sometimes site the phone as the death knell of their reading life. But increasingly, people are consciously resisting the addictive pull of the algorithm and finding their way back to reading. My fantasy for the future is that our savvy young people come to reject tech and embrace books (and records). We can all dream!