Keridwyn Dovey

She believed that the next book was

would find you rather than the other way around.

But I have to say that the experience of getting their prescriptions and they sent me off to read books that I had not actually even heard of.

So it reminded me how many books there are in the world and that you sometimes do need help finding them.

But then also just getting to know them and how they worked.

And the bigger kind of picture behind the work that they were doing, often it was people in times of terrible grief and suffering who were coming to them.

And just through this very gentle, simple way of just guiding them to those next books that they were going to read, they were actually able to, I think, change lives in that sense.

And they also only prescribe fiction.

So I know, you know, you're such a great reader and lover of fiction.

And for me too, it's my first love.

And I really appreciated that, that they don't prescribe, you know, self-help books or biographies or nonfiction.

They actually believe that fiction and

And particularly literary fiction, which makes them sound snobby, but they aren't.

They're actually basing it on research that's been found that literary fiction in terms of that empathy surge that you get as a reader, it has a much bigger impact on our brains than genre fiction or trade fiction, which isn't to say that, you know, it's better in any, you know, qualitative sense.

sense.

But I think the impact on our brains of language is very interesting.

And yeah, for the empathy kick to happen, the language actually has to take your brain outside of its usual pathways.

So when you read a beautiful metaphor that's unusual and startles you, it actually does something different in your brain.

It lights up a slightly different part of your brain than if you read a cliche.

And so that's