At KKC we have lots of passionate fiction readers and I am sure that they know that reading is beneficial but they may be surprised to find out why that is. According to this article, “The beautiful lies of novels, movies, and TV stories have surprisingly powerful effects — and may even help make society tick”.

Is fiction good for us? We spend huge chunks of our lives immersed in novels, films, TV shows, and other forms of fiction. Some see this as a positive thing, arguing that made-up stories cultivate our mental and moral development. But others have argued that fiction is mentally and ethically corrosive. It’s an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down?

This controversy has been flaring up — sometimes literally, in the form of book burnings — ever since Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic. In 1961, FCC chairman Newton Minow famously said that television was not working in “the public interest” because its “formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons” amounted to a “vast wasteland.” And what he said of TV programming has also been said, over the centuries, of novels, theater, comic books, and films: They are not in the public interest.

Until recently, we’ve only been able to guess about the actual psychological effects of fiction on individuals and society. But new research in psychology and broad-based literary analysis is finally taking questions about morality out of the realm of speculation.

This research consistently shows that fiction does mould us.

Go here to find out more.

Interesting reading from the NYT.

Amid the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience.

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.

Read more here.

The Book of the Future.

This is a really interesting TED talk and I am keen to read her book, QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

Really interesting post from Maria Tatar at The New Yorker. It discusses how little blonde girls came to be “indelibly equated with innocence” who redeem sinful adults through sacrificial deaths.

Days after “The Hunger Games” opened at movies theatres, few commentators noted that the once-sacred prohibition against the on-screen killing of children had been spectacularly violated. Instead, cyberspace lit up with messages about the ethnicity of the tributes from District 11, Thresh and Rue, two deeply sympathetic characters who become sacrificial victims in the Hunger Game’s pageant of violence. One of those tweets was particularly radioactive: “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the little blonde innocent girl you picture.” It quickly went viral, raising the question, as Anna Holmes wrote on the Book Bench recently, of how “little blonde” girls came to be indelibly equated with innocence.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/04/the-hunger-games-and-the-little-blonde-innocents-tradition.html#ixzz1rrpXu7Cz

The Hunger Games is becoming more controversial by the day …

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom released its annual list of most frequently challenged books of 2011 yesterday, and the increased popularity of Suzanne Collins’ dystopian saga — in large part fueled by buzz surrounding the blockbuster film — drove the books higher on the list. In 2010, only the first novel cracked the top ten at number five. In 2011, all three books occupy the number three position, and the complaints have grown more varied: “anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence.”

Read more here.

Here’s an interesting article that I saw on the NZ Herald site -

Book hoarders of the world can rest easy.

Last week, academics confirmed what book lovers like me instinctively knew: re-reading an old favourite is good for you.

A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, concludes that repeated “hedonic experiences” such as re-reading a novel or watching a film for a second time, offer many mental health benefits including heightened awareness and pleasure, and opportunities for growth and self-reflexivity.

“Even though people are already familiar with the stories or the places, re-consuming brings new or renewed appreciation of both the object of consumption and themselves,” study authors Cristel Antonia Russell of American University and Sidney J. Levy of the University of Arizona said. “By doing it again, people get more out of it.”

The study is based on in-depth interviews conducted both in the United States and here in New Zealand, where Russell taught at the University of Auckland. The researchers focused on experiences people actively and consciously choose to repeat – rather than habitual or addictive behaviour – such as re-reading books, re-watching films and returning to the same holiday destination.

Read the rest here.