Turns out reading Lee Child may be more beneficial than reading back issues of The Wall Street Journal or that three volume biography of Benjamin Franklin your brother-in-law gave you for Christmas.
Anne Kreamer makes a compelling argument for reading fiction in The Harvard Business Review: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/the_business_case_for_reading.html
Stories are like computer simulations only for understanding human nature. Our brains actually fire up as if we were actually experiencing Stories teach us to empathize with people who are different from us, and as a result of reading fiction we become more open-minded and socially intelligent.
For those of you who know me personally and are wondering why I’m reading The Harvard Business Review——it’s all research, baby.