neuroscientists have found plenty of proof that reading fiction stimulates all
sorts of cognitive areas—not just language regions but also those responsible
for coordinating movement and interpreting smells. Because literary books
are so mentally invigorating, and require such engagement, they make us
smarter than other kinds of reading material, as a 2009 University of Santa
Barbara indicated. Researchers found that subjects who read Kafka's "The Country
Doctor"—which includes feverish hallucinations from the narrator and surreal
elements—performed better on a subsequent learning task than a control group
that read a straightforward summary of the story. (They probably enjoyed
themselves a lot more while reading, too.)
