“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

— Charles Dickens,

“A Christmas Carol”

If I were the imaginary king of an imaginary kingdom whose subjects had become as divided as we are today in America, I would issue a decree that “a literary saturation” of books should take place among the kingdom’s subjects, complete with an ambitious reward system for the reading of them.

Under the terms of this decree, everyone could choose their own book, which must be a work of fiction in the form of an ink-printed, hand-held volume to be read within a specified time frame. Why a work of fiction? Because studies have shown that in general, people make more emotional and psychological connections with physical paper books. Research also has shown that people who read literary fiction demonstrate an enhanced ability to understand the feelings and beliefs of others.

“Psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano have shown that reading literary fiction........

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