Your Brain Really Needs You to Read a Novel

Longform reading, particularly novels, build attention and empathy

A few months ago, a friend of mine recommended the novel Homeseeking by Karissa Chen. With the unusual circumstance of four child-free plane rides that same week, I spent two on the final edits of my own book and two on the novel, which was a welcome escape.

As I got to the final, tear-jerking pages of the epic saga set over six decades in China, Taiwan, and the U.S., it opened a whole window into how much families were fragmented by the politics of the era—something I just never knew before.

But the story also lingered with me days after I was done. I kept thinking about the characters as if they were living beings, and it got me thinking about why our brains need novels.

Four Reasons Your Brain Benefits from Novels

1. Long-form reading restores fragmented attention spans

As I’ve written about before, most of our attention is interrupted with short bursts—quick emails, multi-tasking, thirty-to-sixty-second reels. We are constantly scanning and skimming to extract the key insights, but this means our brains are not used to processing information in long-form ways as effectively as they once were.

Novels act as a counterweight, holding our attention—and restoring our ability to sustain our focus—on a meandering story, in flashbacks, from different characters’ points of view—as Homeseeking did over generations and continents.

2. Reading builds skills in imagination and creativity

I’ve done it too—so much easier to watch the movie rather than read the book the movie is based on. What I tell my husband: “I need to turn my brain off. Want to watch a movie tonight?”

But if reels are like Sour Patch for your brain, reading a novel is kale for the mind. Unlike passive forms of entertainment, novels require active participation—your brain is responsible for envisioning the story, for sounding out the characters’ voices and tone.

Your mind, just as much as the writer’s words, creates the experience—functional MRI shows just how the brain’s areas are recruited in this. When we don’t use our minds to imagine and create, our abilities in these areas weaken just like a muscle.

3. In an age of fast-paced living, novels are a way to slow down

Think about how immediate and instant practically everything in our lives are now—reaching a friend (instant messaging!), watching a TV show (no commercials!), food (delivery!). We just don’t have to wait anymore. It sounds convenient, but it’s also trained us to get uncomfortable, restless, and agitated when things are slow.

Novels are one of the few things left that require a steady investment of sustained cognitive energy—a slow burn to get to the satisfying end. The very act of reading slowly develops cognitive patience and delayed gratification, skills that are becoming increasingly more elusive.

You could speed-read, or skip to the last pages, but the payoff comes from having invested into the characters and the stories, from building a connection over hundreds of pages that makes their ending so impactful.

4. Reading fiction (particularly literary fiction) improves empathy

Back to Homeseeking, I can’t recall a book I’ve read specifically about the cost and consequences of those who served in China’s wars. The style of writing kept drawing me in, but the content of the story allowed me to step into the shoes of an elderly Chinese man looking back at his life and his love. That has a humanizing effect.

This is what reading a novel can do: give us the opportunity to understand the emotional experience of someone completely different from us, and to realize how those emotions are universal, cutting across time and culture.

Research shows that the immersive experience of fiction builds empathy. To feel the feelings of others builds common humanity—so necessary in today’s dehumanizing and distancing world.

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So in 2026, give your mind the gift of a novel. What’s on your reading list for next year? Let me know in the comments so I can get my own list going.