Book Therapy

What can books do for us? Is reading useful? Is it therapeutic? Canit make us happy? Can it provide us with the spiritual resourcesnecessary to shield ourselves from adversity? Can literature beprescribed? Does it benefit both body and soul? Science increasinglyacknowledges the benefits of books. Studies show that the effectsof reading can be equated with those of meditation and medicine.Readers sleep better, they experience lower levels of stress anddepression and have higher self-esteem than non-readers. Readingprolongs life and changes us in an essential way; good fiction expandsour horizons, it helps us to understand others better, it teaches usempathy. Each chapter of Booktherapy is a formula for getting closerto the authors, the contexts, the fragments and the reflections thathave provided Jordi Nadal - author and editor of these and manyother pages - with a soothing balm in difficult moments and whichhave acted as a guide for each important decision. This is a recipebook for living more lives than just our own, and which serves toconfirm the validity of Montesquieu's words: 'I have never knownany distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.'