Very, very little reading time due to too much overwork. In the tiny nanoseconds of time I can sneak I'm reading a fascinating book by Lisa Zunshine called Why We Read Fiction. It's a slim book, and I've had it for a month, so I should have been able to finish it weeks ago--but I'm still barely a third of the way into it. But I wanted to post about this in hopes someone else might be intrigued enough to want to get their own copy.Here's an Amazon link.

Of course there are all kinds of reasons why we read. Her particular theory homes in on the Theory of Mind. To quote from her opening: This book makes a case for admitting the recent findings of cognitive psychologists into literary studies by showing how their research into the ability to explain behavior in terms of the underlying states of mind--or mind-reading ability--can furnish us with a series of surprising insights into our interaction with literary texts. This immensely readable book then focuses in on some well-known works, and references others. As it happens I'm familiar with the texts that she names, but sometimes that means familiar from a reading decades ago. In other words I don't think you need to know the works, but if you do want to get them, they're such standards that any library will have 'em.

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