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When was the last time you actually sat down with a real book? Not a podcast in your earbuds while folding laundry, not an audiobook on your commute — but a physical (or Kindle/Kobo, we’ll allow it) book that you held in your hands and turned the pages one by one.
In the rush of adult life, carving out quiet moments for reading can feel almost impossible. There’s always a to-do list screaming for your attention: kids to wrangle, a career to build, meals to plan, self-care you keep promising you’ll get to someday. Even at home, the constant hum of tasks makes it easier to choose something passive, like listening while multitasking, over the deliberate act of sitting still with a book.
But maybe this summer, when you finally step away from the endless to-do lists and daily noise, you can reclaim the simple pleasure of falling into a different world. Imagine stretching out on a dock or curling up in a hammock with nothing but the sound of the breeze and the turning pages. Imagine reading a book — not as a productivity hack, but as an invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and get lost in your imagination.
And no — you don’t need to pick up Tolstoy or slog through a dense nonfiction book (unless that’s your thing) to get the benefits. Even the fluffiest beach read can work wonders.
Train Your Focus
If you’re worried your attention span can’t handle anything longer than a TikTok caption, here’s some good news: reading actually trains your brain to focus. While audiobooks are a great addition to your repertoire, (by all means, I love a good audiobook, too), picking up a physical book has its benefits.
In a published interview, Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, said, “About 10 to 15 per cent of eye movements during reading are actually regressive—meaning [the eyes are] going back and re-checking,” Willingham explains. “This happens very quickly, and it’s sort of seamlessly stitched into the process of reading a sentence.” This is where audiobooks are different. You can rewind and listen to the same part again, but it takes more conscious effort and doesn’t tend to happen as often.
Also, if you’re anything like me, when you try to stop multitasking and actually give an audiobook your full attention, you tend to fall asleep partway through a chapter. And somehow, I will never find that exact moment that I stopped listening ever again. Can you relate?
Stress-Free Summer
For starters, reading is one of the quickest ways to unwind. In a study from the University of Sussex, researchers found that reading for just six minutes can slash stress levels by a whopping 68 per cent. That means you can think of your paperback thriller as a portable relaxation device and a form of self-care.
My personal favourites are romance books. Whether it’s an ever popular Sarah J Maas novel or my current read ‘Outlander’ (where can I find myself a Scottish Highlander?), romance novels get me out of my head and the constant stress of daily life in the best way.
“Absorbing and heartwarming…lavishly evokes the land and lore of Scotland.” – Publishers Weekly
Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century, and a lover in another…
In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord…1743.
Reading Could be Good for Longevity
On top of helping you de-stress, reading might also help keep your mind sharp as you age. A study found that people who read regularly were less likely to experience cognitive decline after both 6 and 14 years than those who read less often. Translation: picking up a book today could help keep your brain in better shape tomorrow.
Your body might thank you too. A large study in Social Science & Medicine followed participants over 12 years and found that book readers had a 20 per cent reduction in risk of mortality compared to non-book readers.
Novels could be more impactful than newspapers, which tend to raise stress levels, or magazines, according to the study.
Boost Your Mood and Emotional Intelligence
The researchers also suggested that books encourage “deep reading,” which helps build empathy and social understanding — two surprising factors that may play a role in longevity.
Reading, especially talking about the books we’ve read can boost your mood. Not only does reading help you get out of the doom and gloom mindset, but talking about the books you’re reading can help foster social connection, which in turn boosts mood.
Beyond just cheering us up, books can actually help with mental health concerns, like depression. A study found that bibliotherapy – using literature to help improve your life – can be considered an effective long term treatment for mild depression, even when using fiction rather than self-help books (Mouland et al., 2017). In other words, a novel could be a gentle companion during tough times — no heavy theory required.
And more than mindset, reading can actually make you more emotionally intelligent. You can learn about different situations and empathize with characters who you’ve never met. You can see the way different peoples’ brains work and in general, learn more about the world, even through fiction novels.
Some Books to Get You Started
Short Stories
“Alice Munro is among the major writers of English fiction of our time” — Margaret Atwood
My Best Stories is a dazzling selection of stories—seventeen favourites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career. Royal Beatings” shows us right away how far we are from the romantic world of happy endings. “The Albanian Virgin” smashes the idea that all of her stories are set in B.C. or in Ontario’s “Alice Munro Country.” “A Wilderness Station” breaks short story rules by transporting us back to the 1830s and then jumping forward more than a hundred years. And the final story, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which was adapted into the film Away from Her, leads us far beyond the turkey-plucking world of young girls into unflinching old age.
“By any metric—craftsmanship, intelligence, addictiveness—Roupenian’s stories are excellent.” — NPR.ORG
“Cat Person” And Other Stories
Spanning a range of genres and topics—from the mundane to the murderous and supernatural—these are stories about sex and punishment, guilt and anger, the pleasure and terror of inflicting and experiencing pain. These stories fascinate and repel, revolt and arouse, scare and delight in equal measure. And, as a collection, they point a finger at you, daring you to feel uncomfortable—or worse, understood—as if to say, “You want this, right? You know you want this.”
Short Books
“A quiet masterpiece” — Seattle Times
The surprising story of 36 year-old Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction—many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual—and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action…
“Briskly original and subversively funny.” ― Publishers Weekly
When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large.
Romance Novels
“Steamy, sexy and fun, you’ll want to soar through these pages.” — New York Post
Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar… in Washington. Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face. Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan.
“Anyone who appreciates old Hollywood glamour will want to check this one out.” ― Today.com
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career. Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story.
Murder Mystery/Thriller Comedies
“A mystery with warmth, humor, and many descriptions of delicious teas and foods. Recommended for fans of Sutanto and of character-driven cozy mysteries.” — Library Journal
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands
“Suspenseful, funny…. More, please.” ― Kirkus Reviews
Finlay Donovan is killing it . . . except, she’s really not. She’s a stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: the new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.
When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet . . . Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.
My Personal Favourite
“Sellevision is brilliant, subversive, and marvelously evil. This is TV Guide for the morally bereft and spiritually bankrupt. Thank God. I feel queasy I didn’t write it.” ― Suzanne Finnamore
Welcome to the world of Sellevision, America’s premier retail broadcasting network. When Max Andrews, the much loved and handsome (that is, lonely and gay) host of a “Toys for Tots” segment, accidentally exposes himself in front of millions of kids, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. As Max struggles to find a new job in television, the popular and perky host Peggy Jean Smythe is receiving sinister emails from a stalker. Popping pills and drinking heavily, she fails to notice that her husband is spending a lot of time with the young babysitter who lives next door. Then there’s Leigh, whose affair with married Sellevision boss Howard Toast is going nowhere until she announces their relationship on air. A blistering satire of our overcharged, scandal-obsessed world.
Pick a Book You’ll Have Fun Reading
All of this is great news for anyone planning a summer of lighter reading. Those so-called “easy” books — romances, mysteries, thrillers, or even celebrity memoirs — can deliver major benefits without feeling like work. And if you’re reading for pure fun, you’re more likely to keep picking up books long-term, which is when the real magic happens.
So this summer, when you’re packing for the cottage or plotting your next rainy-day activity, go ahead and reach for the book that makes you happiest. The one you can’t put down. The one that makes you forget for a few precious hours that your phone exists.
You’re not just escaping — you’re investing in your body, brain, and mental well-being. You might even be adding a few more good years to your life. And that’s a pretty compelling plot twist.
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The information provided on TheHealthInsider.ca is for educational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. TheHealthInsider.ca advises consulting a medical professional or healthcare provider when seeking medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment. To read about our editorial process, click here.