Summer Reading Never Felt So Vital

A recent University of Toronto study noted that a common, but often overlooked, condition people experience is discomfort with ambiguity. The study indicated that this condition “can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making.” So, how did the study suggest we avoid being consumed by the uncomfortable burden of ambiguity?

The answer was, simply, that all we have to do is read more literary fiction. According to researchers, “the thinking a person engages in while reading fiction does not necessarily lead him or her to a decision … this decreases reader’s need to come to a definitive conclusion.”

We think we’re thoughtful, fair, flexible and make good decisions. Maybe it’s because we all read so much. Here’s our ambiguity-be-gone list of the fiction we’re reading this summer:

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
World War Z by Max Brooks
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Pilgrims by Elizabeth Gilbert
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
The Chocolate Money by Ashley Prentice Norton
Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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