…reading a good book won\u2019t make you a more moral person, but it will help you understand others better. Got it. But what else does reading great literature do? My friend Karen Swallow Prior\u201d\u201dwho is a professor of English at Liberty University\u201d\u201dgave an intriguing answer recently in The Atlantic Monthly. Reading a good book and reading it well makes us more human.<\/p>\n
Prior says that \u201cWhat good literature can do and does do\u201d\u201dfar greater than any importation of morality\u201d\u201dis to touch the human soul. \u201cReading,\u201d\u009d she continues, \u201cis one of the few distinctively human activities that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.\u201d\u009d Reading does not come naturally to us, like language does. We must be taught how to read. And, she says, there\u2019s something decidedly spiritual about considering a bunch of words and symbols, understanding them, analyzing them, interpreting them, and especially finding meaning in them.<\/p>\n