These notes from a book show one reason I read

A Short History of Myth ~ by Karen Armstrong, 2005, history, 176 pages, 8/10

"Yet the experience of reading a novel ... can be seen as a form of  meditation. ... It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives" (p. 147).

"A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest" (p. 149).