Day 24- Rewire Your Brain (By Reading Fiction)!

Today I'm going to build a case for reading more fiction! 

ALERT! I referred to the book The Road To Tender Hearts as “light and fluffy”. There are several TWs in the first chapters. Please research before starting this book  I personally love it, but wasn’t aware of the content before I spoke about beginning to read it.

Find me on the Story Graph app: @curating_the_curious

Welcome to DAY TWENTY FOUR of our new 30-day COMMUNITY PROJECT where we make something with our hands every day in order to improve our mental health. We all realize that creativity heals...it's time to put that knowledge into action.

These episodes will exist here, marked with the days numbered, in order for you to follow along at any speed that you like. Miss a day? Doesn't matter. Just pick up right where you left off and keep making things. These episodes will give us all some accountability, but if you need more, pair up with a partner. It really does help!

Join our creative community by making something today, whether it's for five minutes or several hours—your brain will thank you. Let's do this thing together and turn all of this sh*t into something beautiful!

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Transcript

Favorite Book App

Mental Health & Reading For Pleasure

How Fiction Rewires The Brain

Attention Span & Focus Rehab

The Book That Turned Me Into A Reader

2 Lighter Books For Anyone Who Needs It Right Now

Movie Recommendation

Public Service Announcement

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Although recording this 30-day project has taken well over six months, welcome to day 24. Today I want to talk about reading for pleasure. From the very beginning of this podcast back in 2020, there's been an emphasis on reading, but I feel like a lot of it was nonfiction. And I've had this little voice in the back of my head for years saying, I think I need to kind of switch this up. I wanted to become the type of person who just reads for pleasure, someone who looks forward to it, someone who thinks about it during the day, instead of thinking about all the worries and anxieties. And I wanted to see if it would bring a calm to my life, a stronger attention span, and also to help me rewire my brain. Sounds like a pretty tall order. And believe me, it was. However, about a year later, I'm checking in and I'm telling you, it really has become an essential component in my mental health. So even though this project originally began as something where we're working with our hands in order to make our brains happier, I'm now adding in books, fiction books to be exact, and I'm dreaming of making this podcast into something a little bit more book related. First, I want to talk about my favorite new book app. I do not use Goodreads anymore. A, Story Graph app is just better. I enjoy it more. And B, Story Graph app is not owned by Amazon. So double double plus. I joined it recently. I love it. Um, I just love the way that it's laid out and I love, I only have two friends on there, but I like seeing what they're reading. I like seeing what they just finished. It's pretty cool. So if you join, my account is at curating underscore the underscore curious. I have like 31 books listed on there right now. So far this year, I have read seven books, which is amazing. In the entire year of 2025, my big becoming a reader year, I read 14. So I'm already in one month and a week, halfway to that number. I don't think I'm gonna keep up that pace though. It was just kind of like how things ended up. After this past year, you know, reading 20-something books, I'm now beginning to understand what I like and don't like about books. I'm I'm getting better at researching, I'm getting better at genres, I love literary fiction, I love historical fiction, which honestly blew me away when I realized that I like that because I thought I would hate it. But if you do already read or if you want to become a reader, join the story graph app and find me because I want this to become kind of like a community. I'm really, really into it. I'm currently reading the historical fiction book called The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. Loving that book. I'm loving the relationships between the women that live in this house. Um, they all rent rooms and they have these Thursday meetups, and it is so well written and so interesting. It's about friendship, it's about, you know, females supporting females, it's it's about a lot of things actually, but I'm loving the relationships. I just started listening to The Road to Tender Hearts, which I just want that, you know, warm, fuzzy pick-me-up that I've heard that it is. Um so at any given time, I'm usually reading an actual book at night when I go to bed. And it takes me a long time because sometimes I just get really tired and I read four pages, and then I listen to one book. That's usually when I'm doing laundry or cleaning or whatever. I I like to listen to a book when I'm not listening to like Amy Pohler's podcast or something. So it seems weird that I do both, but it doesn't confuse me. And it's they're usually very different moods, like, you know, my historical fiction at night in bed, and then Road to Tender Hearts during the day when I'm driving around and whatnot. I'm really liking it. And I'm also becoming very good at knowing whether I should be reading something or listening to it, because some books are just better on audio. So I want to just start talking about all those things. I want to keep the things that I've had in this podcast, but I want to add this as well. And I want to find other readers who want to come and talk about this stuff. I don't want just photographers, although I love my photographer friends. I just want this to be a community where we explore things other than the horror shows that are happening in front of our eyes in life, you know? And I want this to be a community of gathering, a community of growing, learning, having fun, you name it. But books, books, they can reshape your brain. Reading fiction for pleasure can rewire your brain. It has done so much for me, guys. And I was dealing with a lot, so much, and I just didn't even know if I was gonna get back to myself. And reading has helped so, so much. Another thing that has contributed to my mental health just drastically is walking every day, going on as long of a walk as I can every single day. I don't listen to anything when I walk. I just hear the birds, the ocean, the sounds of nature around me, and no headphones. I'm just walking with my dog, looking up at the sky. It has been a game changer. I highly recommend any walking you can do, even if you live in the snow. I just figure out a way to do it. Walk around the block, just get out there. But back to the case of reading, rewiring your brain. There's this site called Good Neuroscience, and they talk about what reading literature does to your brain. They say when you read about someone running, your motor cortex in your brain activates. When you read about a velvet texture in a book, your sensory cortex fires. When you read about cinnamon, your olfactory regions respond. Your brain doesn't just understand the words, it experiences them. And this is called embodied cognition, and it's happening right now as you're listening to me talk about those things. The scientific studies show also that people who read literary fiction score higher on theory of mind tests, and that's like the ability to understand what others are thinking and feeling. If you read fiction, you're just better at understanding other people. When you read fiction, you're living a day in somebody else's shoes. You're literally training your brain to see through other people's eyes. That's mind-expanding stuff. And there's nothing bad about reading nonfiction. That's, you know, excellent for learning facts, but reading fiction rewires how you think. They also go into talking about how your brain gets a better workout when the book is challenging you. And they say that literary fiction produces stronger effects than genre fiction. But to be honest, who cares? If you're reading fiction and you're enjoying it, you're expanding your mind, I don't give a crap what the genre is, or if you're doing audio or if you're reading the book, like there are minor differences in these things, but all in all, just read, you know? It's really all about neuroplasticity, which is just your brain rewiring itself. And every single book you read, one, strengthens neural pathways. This is a proven scientific fact. Two, creates new connections in your brain. And three, enhances network efficiency in your brain. So reading fiction is like cross-training for your mind. It's like being an athlete out on that track, out on that field. So you're not just entertaining yourself, although you are enjoying it, you are upgrading your mental software. When I first started trying to become a reader around a year ago, I struggled. I had to reread every page for a few months. I just had to keep going back and rereading because I was zoning out, I was losing my place, I was forgetting what I read. My attention span had been so disrupted by these years of social media use and, you know, what all the stuff going on in the world. Um, I just didn't have an attention span anymore. So this has been, you know, a very long process of retraining my brain to look at long-form text and be able to take it in and focus on it and focus my mind on a single task. It's about so many things, but it's become something that I also really, really am passionate about. And last but not least, I'm sure there are a million things I can say, but this one has to be said. Reading creates the type of person that authoritarian regimes cannot control. If you think for yourself, you're able to notice patterns, you can consider historical experiences, you can have empathy for others, and be a person that is harder to scare and make obedient. If I had to come up with the one book that I think turned me into a reader, like turn that light on, and a reader of historical fiction, which I didn't think I would like. It was The Nightingale. I know everybody hears people talking about this book and it by Kristen Hanna, and it feels overdone, but if you read it, I I think you will understand why everybody's talking about it. That book changed me, it stays with me, it turned me into a reader, and it turned me into someone who loves historical fiction. However, it's heavy, it's dark, it's got a lot to it that might not work for you at this point in time if you're under stress from the events taking place in the world. And then I would recommend to you Remarkably Bright Creatures. I recommend that on audio. I tried it in book form, and I was like, man, everybody loves this, and I can't get into it. I started listening to it in audio form and instantly was like, okay, this is the way this needs to be done. Just the voice of uh Marcellus was amazing, and I don't know, it's just one of those. Another audio book that is like a warm hug, everybody says, and I agree. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Clun. That is so good. Please read that. It's fantasy, and that was my first fantasy book, but I loved it and I loved it on audio. Um, the voices are fantastic. He does a million different voices, they're very cartoonish. It just brings it alive. So I recommend that for light, fluffy, warm reading. And my very last thing, I have to mention the new documentary. It was executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker. It's called The Librarians, and it is a documentary and it follows librarians in Texas, Florida, and other states as they unite to combat book banning in the United States. It's receiving really high reviews. Um, I've heard a lot about it. I've been looking forward to it. I have not watched it yet, but I wanted to include it in this episode in case you like documentaries or want to check this out. But I will be watching it soon. Tomorrow is February 17th. It is the lunar new year, and there are big, big changes ahead, and I am ready for it. A public service announcement before I go. Please find me on the Story Graph app at curating the curious. Cancel your Goodreads, cancel your Audible, replace them with StoryGraph app and for audiobooks. Switch to Libro.fm app. The money that you spend on Libro.fm for your audiobooks, a portion of that money goes to local bookstores instead of Jeff Bezos wallet. And I like that. Also, no more ordering books through Amazon. Please, please, if you need to do it online, bookshop.org. A portion of all the sales go to local bookstores. And I believe that is the end of my TED Talk. I'll see you next time, and in the meantime, stay curious.