What can books do for us? Is reading useful? Is it therapeutic? Can
it make us happy? Can it provide us with the spiritual resources
necessary to shield ourselves from adversity? Can literature be
prescribed? Does it benefit both body and soul? Science increasingly
acknowledges the benefits of books. Studies show that the effects
of reading can be equated with those of meditation and medicine.
Readers sleep better, they experience lower levels of stress and
depression and have higher self-esteem than non-readers. Reading
prolongs life and changes us in an essential way; good fiction expands
our horizons, it helps us to understand others better, it teaches us
empathy. Each chapter of Booktherapy is a formula for getting closer
to the authors, the contexts, the fragments and the reflections that
have provided Jordi Nadal — author and editor of these and many
other pages — with a soothing balm in difficult moments and which
have acted as a guide for each important decision. This is a recipe
book for living more lives than just our own, and which serves to
confirm the validity of Montesquieu's words: «I have never known
any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.»
