Jackie Gingrich Cushman: Get Lost - In A Book

Who should John McCain pick as his running mate? “She’s lost in a book, just like her mother,” noted my mother. She was referring to my daughter and to me. Growing up, I spent hours curled up with books. Reading provided me with escape, and the ability to travel to different worlds without leaving my home in rural Georgia. Little did I know that, in addition to entertaining me, reading fiction sharpened my social skills without even requiring that I be social by placing me in simulated social situations In “Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds,” (Raymond Mar et al, University of Toronto, Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 40, Issue 5, October 2006), the researchers tested and compared the social skills... [read full story]