Book therapy:An old idea finds new life

2021-01-29关金龙

疯狂英语·新策略 2021年1期

题材健康体裁新闻文章词数难度建议用时4 2 7 ★★★★ 8分钟

The library of Pharaoh RamessesⅡis said to have borne the inscription （题词） “the house of healing for the soul”.Dylan Thomas reportedly liked to relax by reading Agatha Christie while he sucked sweets in the bathtub.The novelist Yiyun Li turns to War and Peace in the toughest times.When she launched a virtual reading group on Tolstoy's masterpiece in lockdown,3,000 people signed up.

In recent years,a growing body of research has backed up our idea that books not only entertain and educate,but can also help us to recover and grow.They offer companionship to the lonely,insight to the anxious,and release to those who feel trapped.

This is the impulse that has stirred Ann Cleeves,creator of the fictional detectives Vera and Jimmy Perez,to co-sponsor a bibliotherapy plan in the north-east,working with public health teams.Doctors,community workers and others will be able to refer individuals struggling with chronic（长期的）pain,mental health problems and loneliness to five reading coaches.

Bibliotherapy often refers to the use of texts that are directly relevant to the patient's condition.Book Prescription Wales,for example,lends high-quality self-help titles to people with problems including stress and anger.A review of several studies found such schemes have a long-term effect upon reducing depression,and National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines recommend it as a possible treatment.

But Cleeves has a broader ideal in mind.She described how reading and writing fiction when her late husband was recovering from a mental disorder helped her to understand her own response and allowed her to escape into a different world.The reading coaches will match their patients with poetry and novels as well as non-fiction,and will introduce them to librarians and other readers.Books offer us a way back to people as well as a retreat from them;studies have suggested that regular readers of fiction are more able to relate to others.

Of course,what is uplifting to one reader will seem depressing to another;what one finds unapproachably grim may be comforting to the next.Some may respond to the children's classic The Secret Garden while others will recognize themselves in Karl Ove Knausgård or Toni Morrison's novels.The task for the reading coaches will be to figure out who needs W.G.Sebald and who requires P.G.Wodehouse,who will find themselves in the pages of Queenie and whowillpreferKingLear—or,indeed,an account of RamessesⅡ's world.An ancient idea has found fresh resonance（共鸣）.

Reading Check

1.Why does the author mention Dylan Thomas and Yiyun Li in Para.1?

A.To describe their reading habits.

B.To introduce a new phenomenon.

C.To showcase the impact of lockdown.

D.To interpret the inscription of the library.

2.What does paragraph 2 mainly talk about?

A.The process of reading.

B.The healing effect of books.

C.A traditional belief on reading.

D.A new conclusion of a research.

3.What can be inferred about bibliotherapy plan in the north-east?