This is curious but strangely compelling article:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/geeks-guide-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Lois McMaster Bujold, author of the Vorkosigan Saga of space adventure stories, is one of the most acclaimed science fiction authors of all time. She’s won the prestigious Hugo award four times, and every novel she’s written over her 26-year career is still in print. And not only is she entertaining hordes of readers, she may also be fighting crime — at least according to an interview she once read with a forensic pathologist.
“He made the remark, sort of in passing, that he had never gone into a bad crime scene in any house where there were a lot of books,” says Bujold in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “These were all book-free zones.”
She thinks this may be because books have a unique ability to remove you from your current headspace and transport you into the mind of another person — and hopefully increase your empathy for them. Books are, she feels, the closest thing we have to telepathy, and that this is an aspect of reading all too often ignored in literature courses.
“Escapist literature gets a bad rap,” she observes. “But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.”
If it’s true that books make people less violent, then Bujold must be making an ever-growing dent in the crime rate — her latest Vorkosigan novel, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, just became the first of her books to hit the New York Times Best Sellers list.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/geeks-guide-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Lois McMaster Bujold, author of the Vorkosigan Saga of space adventure stories, is one of the most acclaimed science fiction authors of all time. She’s won the prestigious Hugo award four times, and every novel she’s written over her 26-year career is still in print. And not only is she entertaining hordes of readers, she may also be fighting crime — at least according to an interview she once read with a forensic pathologist.
“He made the remark, sort of in passing, that he had never gone into a bad crime scene in any house where there were a lot of books,” says Bujold in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “These were all book-free zones.”
She thinks this may be because books have a unique ability to remove you from your current headspace and transport you into the mind of another person — and hopefully increase your empathy for them. Books are, she feels, the closest thing we have to telepathy, and that this is an aspect of reading all too often ignored in literature courses.
“Escapist literature gets a bad rap,” she observes. “But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.”
If it’s true that books make people less violent, then Bujold must be making an ever-growing dent in the crime rate — her latest Vorkosigan novel, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, just became the first of her books to hit the New York Times Best Sellers list.
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