Novels may be made up, but the emotions they evoke are real. These feelings grow out of our connection to the novel’s characters and the relationships between a protagonist and others in the context of the broader society. As we follow the ups and downs of a carefully crafted story, we build connections within the social and emotional regions of the brain. The result, according to recent research, is a better understanding of other human beings and a deeper empathy for others, leading to improved social skills. Historians have also claimed that great works of fiction have lent support to the concept of human rights. (For more on the psychology of fiction, see “In the Minds of Others,” by Keith Oatley, Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011.)
The image below depicts 10 novels that hold significant sway over the human mind. Although some of these books are set in periods and places different from our own, all come vividly alive for the modern reader. Click on the spine of a book to learn more about the story told inside its cover.
More to Explore
- In the Minds of Others: Reading fiction can strengthen your social ties and even change your personality
- OnFiction: An Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction
Photo credit: Edwina Hay
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40 Comments
Add CommentAll these are good literary works worth reading. At least one of them was made into a film - Madame Bovary, if I remember right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a surprise to me that there are no additions to the suggested literature by readers. May I suggest Miguel Torga's collection of short stories, 'Tales from the Mountain' beautifully translated from Portuguese by Ivana Carlsen. It's a very emotional work depicting triumphs, cruelties and the passion for life, set in the mountains of northern Portugal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiso for God's sake, is this the short of the short list?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe descriptions of The Scarlet Letter and Beloved are inaccurate. Not too sharp.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would suggest that some of the following should also be considered for inclusion in the list.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Trial by Kafka; HG Wells - Man on the Moon or Time Machine; Churchill's War memoirs; Hitler's Mein Kampf;
why must the books included here only be classics. I know classics are important and I have read plenty but it would be nice to see a top 10 list of at 20th century books or maybe be more adventorous and try the year of 2011
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGee willikers, why are half the books by women, half by men? An unlikely outcome, unless one factors PC into the equation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, and Toni Morrison sucks.
Love it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeeeeeeep! Bad answer; three women/seven men.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeeeeeeep! Beeeeeeep! Four women, six men. (Hint: George Eliot was a woman.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCloud Atlas by David Mitchell is my submission for the top 10. Anybody read it? What do you think?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy is Infinite Jest not on this list? The book encourages and rewards reader insight and investigation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you have read the classics, this may not apply to you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou need a good background in classical literature if you are to properly interpret modern events.
Books published in the last decade (or even older ones) are much too new to be considered classics. The library's of the world are filled with books that were, at the time of their publication, heralded as the next great classic work.Today, they are largely unknown.Classics are classics because they have withstood the test of time. Their message resonated down the ages and still have value today.
There are many noteworthy books not on this list. View it as a start, not as a definitive list.
Pride and Prejudice, Madam Bovery, Anna Karenina, The Scarlet Letter
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWere all made into movies
Why would anyone need to be reading the incoherent crap of Mein Kampf unless you want them to learn how to spot a raving looney?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've read several of those novels and all they did for my mind is put me to sleep. I found most of those 'classics' painfully boring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy mind must be totally incapable of being sharpened. I got absolutely nothing out of Pride and Prejudice and even less from Anna Karenina.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFWIW, The Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary, and Anna Karenina were written by men, but they are about the lives of women.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would add To Kill a Mockingbird to the shelf.
I am one of the few women I know who find little of lasting value in Jane Austen's work. They were the romance novels of their time. I don't understand their enduring popularity with women. A novel like The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton has a lot more to say about society's constraints on women of the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom Star Wars to Tolstoy, what a jump!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more vital members of our society missed out on a good liberal education. And it's getting worse, no more Huck Finn? How can a boy grow up these days?
Does Jane still see Dick run?
So far, no one has mentioned the Greek classics?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNone of the mentioned books break out of the realm of reality. Aesop, Grimm, SciFi/Fantasy, religio/spirit.
A few to mention. Mentioned because the Classics deal with man to man dramas. Our minds reach out for so much more. Star Wars, et al, changed the subconscious dream plane. Computers and IT have changed the world of man and our dreams, both sleeping and awake. We now reach for the stars with an elevated expectation of success.
Has our minds dreamings tricked us into looking up again?
Hieroglyphs have certainly stood the test of time, are they classics yet?
"Alone with her small child, Hester Prynne is shamed by the puritan community in seventeenth-century Boston by branding her with a scarlet letter 'A' on her forehead."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHester Prynne was not branded! She wore an A on her dress. Also, you called Pride and Prejudice "the world’s best love story." Did anyone actually read these books?
Regarding 10 novels that will sharpen the mind: Why was War & Peace not included? This novel adds plenty of emotional feelings! I am disappointed that this was not included but would like to know why not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNovel by Tolstoy titled: War and Peace most definitely should have been included within those 10 novels!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of these are not "classics" in the sense that they have withstood the test of time. The "Star Wars" series is a collection of screenplays, not novels. Toni Morrison has a devoted group of readers, but a limited scope in her writing (purposefully): she does not "suck." "War and Peace" will dull your brain irrevocably, not sharpen it. Kafka is too weird to include in popular literature. But don't listen to their nonsense, listen to mine: If you really want to sharpen your mind try exposition treating logic and mathematics - GOOD: "Gödel, Escher and Bach" by Douglas R. Hofstadter would be a start - BETTER: "The Mathematical Experience" by Philip J. Davis and Rueben Hersh - or BEST (the real thing): "Real Variables" by John M. H. Olmstead. My response here stems from the misleading title of this article - you have to read the fine print to know that the authors are addressing the affective domain. In which case the title should have been something like "Ten Novels That Will Improve Your Empathy," but, of course, that would never get past the editors of a journal like Scientific American. In any case, challenging empathic literature does exist (note: "Pride and Prejudice" does not belong in this category: it is long-winded but nevertheless not challenging if you keep a pencil handy to keep track of the characters - a lot of women are attracted to Austin because she captures a woman's empathic and somewhat antilogical world view; some men are even amused by Austin because she gives us insight into a woman's way of seeing the world - anything done well in this respect can be very helpful to men): one writer that comes to mind that fits well in the challenging empathic category is James Joyce: try reading Ulysses - an emotional free-for-all: yes,yes! Or climb "Finnegans Wake," which has a 5.14 or 5.15 rating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo,the Scarlet Letter was not branded on Hester's forehead; it was made of cloth sewn to the front of her dress.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts all in the mind interestingly there are better soulful books out there not one mentioned Mind or better still soul ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuantum, your remarks about Morrison are a clear indication that you would benefit from this reading exercise which improves social skills, empathy and understanding of others. If you can't relate to the author's subject matter, that's one thing, but to insult her writing is another. Maybe you should read more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe list should include Agatha Christie's, A Murder is Announced, and Kathy Bobo's Gospel According to Lucifer and both are available on Kindle at Amazon'com. http://www.amazon.com/The-Gospel-According-Lucifer-ebook/dp/B007FTW7DM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330717290&sr=8-2
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust read a marvelous review of "Einstein's Daughter" by Riley James on Kirkus Book Reviews.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/riley-james/einsteins-daughter-NBJODXAC/#review
Count again,ENVME I do not envy your skills at discerning men from women. While George Eliot was actually a pen name for a woman Mary Anne Evans true. However, there are still six male writers in this group, Goethe, Hawthorne, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Coetzee, and Hamid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese novels (mainly) elucidate "first world, modern (last 300 years)" pathologies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are containers for 3 billion year old genes which have not changed (0.001%?) in the last 20,000 years and the list does not touch this. People would be better if they understood how much pathos is culturally learned/perverted (and not consider them natural) rather than being indoctrinated by these novels into "today's acceptable" behavioral/emotional responses.
These novels are the choices of the pathetic!
How's 'bout House of the Seven Gayboys by Nat Howthorne?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne book was written in 1999, and one was written in 2007...so they aren't all classics
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that Cloud Atlas is a great book that will stimulate your imagination and intelligence. I look forward to reading it again one of these days. It was a great experience the first time around. I just happened to read it back to back with Irwin Yalom's The Schopenhauer Cure, and though the books are very different, I feel they are of a similar quality. So I would recommend that, too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm an avid reader, but this reading list is SO BORING, and "chick" oriented. No wonder we have "Trekkie" conventions. Did no watershed books come out of The French Revolution, the American Revolution, the rise and fall of Communism, 300 years of slavery, the modern cultural revolution, the emancipation of women? I don't believe that. I think the author shows a very limited and conventional, English Literature 101, knowledge of the range of human experience and the human intellect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToni Morrison is a genius. That anyone could say her work "sucks" betrays ignorance and very poor taste as well as crudeness (hello: could you find a better word than "sucks?" Talk about juvenile! "Beloved" is a GREAT novel, one of the best written in this century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are not seeing the forest for the trees! It seems that any fiction, good, bad or ugly gives insight in to the character and emotions of others and this makes one better able to relate to other people. Considering the current world population, it seems inevitable that no matter how badly or strangely a character is portrayed, some of the same emotions and chareteristics will be found in someone somewhere, if not the identical combination in any one person. In short the gender of the author is irrelevant as is the box a book has been categorized into.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW - Mein Kampf isn't fiction if I remember correctly, but an autobiography - stranger than fiction!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust rememeber, Don Quixote went massively nuts by reading books of calvary. But then again, Christopher Columbus went nuts too by reading the same books.
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