In the research conducted by University of Toronto academics Keith Oatley and Ingrid Wickelgren, it was determined that quality novels strengthen the social bonds by improving the human brain. The novels were also found to change personality by improving emotional intelligence. It was stated that reading novels contributed positively to the development of speech, increased the power of interpretation and improved vocabulary. According to the research, readers' identification with the heroes of the novel enriches their imaginations and sharpens their minds.
Top 10 novels that develop the human brain the most:
• Johann von Goethe / The Sorrows of Young Werther (1787)
• Jane Austen / Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne / The Scarlet Letter 1850
• Gustave Flaubert / Madame Bovary (1856)
• George Eliot / Middlemarch (1870)
• Leo Tolstoy / Anna Karenina (1877)
• Virginia Woolf / Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
• Toni Morrison / The Beloved(1987)
• J.M. Coetzee / Disgrace (1999)
• Mohsin Hamid / The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)
