We talk a lot about how reading builds empathy. It’s one of the first things anyone says when they’re defending why we need to help children build a reading habit, and why we should keep reading as adults. Reading helps you understand other people’s lives. And it’s true. But I think we aren’t hyping up this idea enough.
I had a thought the other day… reading doesn’t just make me more understanding of other people. It makes me more conscious of my own life.
There’s something that happens when you follow a character through an arc, their failures, their pivots, their moments of breakthrough and loss, that creates space for you to hold a mirror up to how you’re living. You watch them make choices. You feel the weight of those choices. And then you put the book down and go back to your own life a little more aware of your own choices than you were before.
I’ve been really thinking about this more lately. And, because we are practically internet best friends, I wanted to share a few books with you that made me more conscious of my life.
Soft Launch: A Coming-of-Adulthood Novel by Sarah Vacchiano and A Dress of Violet Taffeta by Tessa Arlen both did something to me that I didn’t expect. Watching the difficulties those characters moved through didn’t make me anxious or sad… it made me grateful. Grateful for the quiet, full life I’ve been building. Grateful for things I might have taken for granted if I hadn’t been living inside those stories for a while. (p.s. as I’m writing this, the e-book version of Soft Launch is on sale.)
And then there’s Alice Scott.
If you’ve read Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, you know what I mean. Alice is driven. Ambitious. She wants success and she goes after it with everything she has. But by the end, she’s reckoning with something harder… that success isn’t always worth what you trade for it. That you can achieve exactly what you set out to and still look around and feel like you’ve lost something essential.
Alice’s arc hit me hard personally. Because I’ve had my own version of that moment.
A few years ago, I worked on a project I truly believed in. I poured myself into it. And eventually I had to face the hardest kind of truth… that it wasn’t going to become what I’d imagined it could be at the start. Letting it go felt like failure. It felt like giving up on something that mattered.
\I learned that letting go of something that’s no longer serving you isn’t failure. It’s wisdom. And the clarity and energy that came from releasing that grip, that’s when I was able to build the things I’m most proud of now.
I think Alice knew that too, eventually.
The research backs up what many of us feel intuitively. Studies show that reading regularly (even if you can squeeze in just 15 minutes a day) strengthens cognitive function, improves memory, and builds the kind of critical thinking that shapes how we make decisions. Reading for pleasure has even been shown to be one of the strongest predictors of long-term success… academically, professionally, and personally.
But I think the benefit that gets talked about least is this one: reading makes us more intentional architects of our own lives.
When you watch a character live, like really live, with all the mess and grace that entails, you start asking yourself questions you might not have previously asked, and figuring out what your best life might look like… for you. Questions come up like…
What am I holding onto that I should let go of?
What does success actually mean to me?
Am I building a life I’ll be proud of, or just a life that looks good from the outside?
For me, a fulfilled life looks like doing work I love, having my family close, and being fully present for the small moments that matter most. That’s it. The books I read didn’t outright tell me these things… but they helped me see it more clearly.
Has a book ever made you more conscious of your own life? Not just more empathetic toward someone else’s but more awake to your own choices, your own life story arc, your own definition of a life well lived?
I’d love to know. Drop it in the comments… the book, the character, the moment you put the book down and thought… I needed to read that.
Read. Move. Build the habit. Change your life.
This is a Reader-Supported.
Every comment, like, share, and upgraded subscription helps keep this space thriving!
The occasional affiliate links are used at no extra cost to you the reader.
Want to book a call to help learn how you can connect with an audience online?
Send me an email at theliteraryassistant@gmail.com
We need to remember that literature can misinform just as well as it can inform. Literature can reinforce bigotry just as well as it can denounce it. We need to read critically; how is the writer trying to influence us? Because they are trying to influence us. No harm in that, but we should always have our radar in operation to not let them slip something past us without considering it consciously.
What book greatly influenced me? Lots of them, but I especially like Tristram Shandy, written several centuries ago. Beside being very entertaining, it made me realize that they were the same people then that we are now. Technology has advanced greatly. But we are the same people. Is that bad?
I read the book A Dress of Violet Taffeta on your recommendation sometime back and quite enjoyed it. As for your question, though, the only thing I can think of is that as I’ve said before, anytime I read a Harry Bosch book, by Michael Connelly, it seems to correct my moral compass to the right direction.