Book Therapy

<p>What can books do for us? Is reading useful? Is it therapeutic? Can</p><p>it make us happy? Can it provide us with the spiritual resources</p><p>necessary to shield ourselves from adversity? Can literature be</p><p>prescribed? Does it benefit both body and soul? Science increasingly</p><p>acknowledges the benefits of books. Studies show that the effects</p><p>of reading can be equated with those of meditation and medicine.</p><p>Readers sleep better they experience lower levels of stress and</p><p>depression and have higher self-esteem than non-readers. Reading</p><p>prolongs life and changes us in an essential way; good fiction expands</p><p>our horizons it helps us to understand others better it teaches us</p><p>empathy. Each chapter of Booktherapy is a formula for getting closer</p><p>to the authors the contexts the fragments and the reflections that</p><p>have provided Jordi Nadal - author and editor of these and many</p><p>other pages - with a soothing balm in difficult moments and which</p><p>have acted as a guide for each important decision. This is a recipe</p><p>book for living more lives than just our own and which serves to</p><p>confirm the validity of Montesquieu's words: I have never known</p><p>any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.</p>