Reading fiction has multiple benefits, writer suggests

Ignore the razzing from your peers, KSL contributor Daniel Burton suggests — don't just read serious nonfiction books — read fiction and experience the best form of reading.

Burton gives a few reasons to read fiction, including:

Self-mastery and empathy

Honing social skills

Being "well-read"

More healthy than watching television

Fiction, Burton wrote, helps people disconnect from the stresses of life and connect with other human beings in an active, empathetic mental process.

"What is a Catch-22 without 'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller? You might know 'a Scrooge' because 'A Christmas Carol' has been adapted for the screen so many times, but Charles Dickens wrote it first, and it is best in its literary form even today," Burton wrote. "Can you imagine Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean or Jack Sparrow without Robert Louis Stevenson' Long John Silver from 'Treasure Island'? Could Will Smith have been in 'I Am Legend' without Richard Matheson? Or Tom Cruise in 'Minority Report' without Philip K. Dick? The list goes on. Before they were blockbusters, they were novels, and I can promise you this: the book is almost always better than the movie."

Read more at KSL.com.