I am not an adventurous person by any standard measure. I don’t take risks with my money or my life. I don’t do extreme sports (like the woman in my book club who is running a marathon in all 50 U.S. states). I can’t travel to exotic places on my retirement income, and these days I don’t even eat exotic foods (gastrointestinal surprises having taught me to stay with the tried and true, and not to eat too much of that, either).
I am a bookish introvert and a homebody. But I do find adventure in reading, and over the years, I have also become a more adventurous reader.
Researchers tell us that, in the process of exploring life through books, we can also become happier, better adjusted people — if we read the right books in the right way.
New Reasons for Reading
The desire for relaxation and escape is an excellent reason to read, and there are countless books for this purpose. When we read to relax, we usually stick with the authors and genres we already know and like (detective stories, romance novels, science fiction).
However, to become more adventurous readers, we need to select books that stimulate and challenge us to move out of our comfort zone. There are actually services available to help with that.
Adventures in Reading is a company in Chicago that recommends books for children in grades K- 8. For a fee, they assess children’s interests and skill levels and suggest books that will keep them engaged, develop positive reading habits, and diversify their interests. They teach children that, in regards to books, “new is good and interesting!” (adventuresinreading.com)
Adult readers may want to try some “bibliotherapy” – professional assistance in using books to address personal issues. Bibliotherapists “prescribe” books that speak to the specific issues a client is facing, such as anxiety, depression, grief, feelings of meaninglessness. The books may take the form of poetry and fiction, or they may be non-fiction works in history, philosophy or psychology, although novels are most common.
Caridwen Dovey, a writer for the New Yorker, consulted a biblitherapist at London’s School of Life, who began the session with a questionnaire about her reading habits and the personal issues she was facing. The author, who was not a religious person, said she worried about “having no spiritual resources to shore myself up against the inevitable future grief of losing somebody I love” (“Can Reading Make Your Happier?” 2015).
The therapist gave her a list of books, none of which Dovey had ever heard of. She read them over the next two years, and although yet untested by the kind of grief she feared, she was tested by acute physical pain and gained insights in how to deal with it from her reading.
Dovey offers a spiritual explanation for the healing power she found in books. “In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcending that elusive state in which the distance between self and the universe shrinks. Reading fiction makes me lose all sense of self, but at the same time makes me feel more uniquely myself.”
Keith Oatley, a novelist and emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, offers a more scientific explanation for Dovey’s experience of healing. “Fiction is a kind of simulation, one that runs not on computers but on minds: a simulation of selves in their interactions with others in the social world. . . based in experience, and involving being able to think of possible futures” (Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, 2011).
Total Immersion Required
Of course, in and of themselves, books are not therapeutic. The reader must be open to the possibility of change, fully engaged in the reading and willing to be transported into the world of the book.
Quickly skimming a text or reading only for “take-aways,” called efferent reading, is not usually therapeutic. Psychologist Jane Myers explains that, in contrast, therapeutic reading entails a “dynamic process of interaction between an individual and literature which promotes the conscious recognition of clients’ ways of knowing and experiencing so that both emotional and cognitive understanding of problems are enhanced” (“Bibliotherapy and DCT: “Co-constructing the Therapeutic Metaphor,” 1998).
In other words, you need to bring your whole self to the book, intellectually and emotionally, and you need to reflect on your thoughts and feelings while in the process of reading.
This kind of reading, which also includes appreciation for the language, style and rhythms of the prose, is called aesthetic reading. It is a full-immersion experience that, as such, can “lead us to deeper knowledge about the intricacies and subtleties of life, of relationships, of the world, of ourselves, rendering them far clearer than when we are living in the midst of them” (William Randall and A. Elizabeth McKim, Reading our Lives, 2008).
Reading Through the Later Years
Bibliotherapists from the School of Life say that the most common issues they address with clients are “life-juncture transitions,” such as adjusting to new careers, getting married, becoming parents and empty-nesters, and losing loved ones. They see a lot of retirees looking for meaning and purpose in the last phase of their lives.
Two of the therapists wrote a book on bibliotherapy in the style of a medical dictionary called The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies (Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin, 2013), which now circulates in 18 countries. There is also a series of books for children called A Spoonful of Stories (Susan Perrow, 2014). These metaphorical tales describe characters with undesirable personality traits (Cranky Cockatoo, Quibbling Queen) who go through journeys of personal change that make them happier.
Older adults, too, could benefit from their own series of books, because growing old is not easy. As Randall and McKim note, over time, we can “lose the thread” of our life story and, as a result of all the changes and transitions, “become vulnerable to the narrative of decline.” Without suitable “counter-stories,” we are at risk of experiencing a late-life identity crisis and falling into despair (Reading our Lives).
On the upside, many of us have more time to read. I was reminded of this the other day while sitting in a coffee house, absorbed in a book. A woman with two small children glanced my way and said to her friend, “Wow, a person sitting alone reading a book. It looks wonderful! Maybe someday. . . .”
So, in the spirit of bibliotherapy, I offer the following “novel remedies” for some common ailments of later life. These books provide humor, solace, and insight. A single dose should make most readers feel better.
- If you’re feeling that you’ve already peaked and it’s all down-hill from here, I recommend The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper or The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared.
- If you’re grieving the death of a spouse, read A Man Called Ove.
- If you think it’s too late to challenge yourself physically, read Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, the biography of Emma Gatewood, the first woman to hike the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail (by herself) at the age of 67.
- If you’re looking for physical intimacy, if not love, read Our Souls at Night.
- If you think life ends when you enter a nursing home, read The Secret Diary of Hendrick Groen 83 ¼ Years Old, Life after Life, or Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty.
There are lots of books to help you address your fear of death and dying, too, but all good therapy takes time. We’ll take up that subject later.
Written by: Ruth Ray Karpen, Ph.D.
Ruth Ray Karpen is a researcher, writer and retired English professor. She has published many books and articles on aging and old age, life story writing, and retirement. (See Beyond Nostalgia: Aging and Lifestory Writing, 2000 and Endnotes: An Intimate Look at the End of Life, 2008). Most recently, as a hospice volunteer whose 98-year-old mother is a hospice patient, she has been exploring the meaning of death and dying. In our series on “Heart and Soul,” she will consider how later life, including the end of life, offers unique opportunities for emotional and spiritual growth.
On behalf of Smart Strategies for Successful Living, our sincerest appreciation goes to Ruth Ray Karpen for her contribution to the heart and soul of living and aging.