Can Reading Make Us Happier?

To be totally honest, when I read this long article, about how reading can make us happier, I thought two immediate things:

1) It’s the New Yorker, so they’re looking to fill issues. And they love long articles.

2) It’s another article making much to-do about nothing…yet trying to also pump up reasons to read.

Wow. To make this simpler…do you really need to be “preached to the converted” about how doing anything you like or interests you is going to make you feel happier? Improve your quality of life? To throw around such deep analytical considerations, such as how reading a book “splits us into two parts as we read,” or “the state of reading consists in the complete elimination of the ego,” while promising “perpetual union” with another mind….

To me this is what this article is really about: whether or not your “forcing” another to read for “medicinal” purposes or not, once you are reading, you’re going to continue reading something that interests you…otherwise—forced or not—you’re simply going to stop. I would. I am one of many.

Oh, and this “prescription” has a new name: “Bibliotherapy.”

I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of good in this article or all it talks about, and I get it that researchers love having things to research…what I am saying is that doing anything that interests you or that you like doing will improve your well-being, whether it’s reading, walking, or skydiving.

That’s all.