Dickens helps your social skills

. . . as do Austen and Chekhov and other greats. According to a new study, reading great literature can better equip you to both understand your own emotions, and empathize with other people. More information is here and here.

Comments

[Marian]

This is very interesting. I wonder if it has anything to do with the character types that feature in books today. It seems like the "heroes" now are always young and glamorized, nothing like the eccentrics and everyday people Dickens and Chekhov wrote about. Not that they didn't have their romanticized characters, either, but overall they wrote a more diverse cast of characters.