So, I get a daily newsletter called NumLock News that contains interesting articles based on statistics. Here’s a book-related one that was included today:
A new paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology assessed evidence that reading fiction books has strong and repeatable benefits, finding that reading fiction in particular was a stronger predictor of verbal skills than reading nonfiction. One long-running study the paper looked at found that teenagers who spent more of their free time reading became adults who were more socially connected, seeing family and friends more often. A study of 3,500 older adults found that those who read books survived 23 months longer than nonreaders, an association that held strongly for books compared to newspapers or magazines, and from a cohort of readers where 87 percent read fiction.
Sanjukta Mondal, Phys.org
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Yes! Reading is my favorite wellness activity and I’m sticking to that.
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I can believe that! Reading is my escape from reality - which in these days is a blessing. As a reader I swing from fiction to nonfiction but I can see why fiction builds a better vocabulary- it’s the adjectives! But reading builds a broader world for you.
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Wonderful I am on the right track. Reading is my escape.
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I appreciate the article and the link. My dad was an avid reader and my mom said she watched game shows as her escape. He beat the male/female life expectancy odds by outliving her by 3 years exactly. He was a centenarian and she was 97. Both stats pretty amazing.
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23 more months?! I read 2-3 books a month. I guess I’d better double that!
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Thanks for sharing - very interesting statistics. I had a raised eyebrow in disbelief when I read fiction was a stronger predictor of verbal skills than reading fiction which lasted all of one minute. A quick review of fiction and nonfiction lists helped me recall that yes indeed, I pulled out the dictionary more frequently when reading fiction.
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