By KATE LEAVER

Want to be better person? Read more.

Get some words into you. Grab a blanket, banish your smartphone from the room, and slip into the life of someone other than yourself. Consume thousands of words with your eyes and your heart.

And write this down somewhere: When in doubt, read.

If I had a book for every time I’ve heard someone say “I don’t have time to read. Who has time to read?” I’d have a library as extensive as that one Belle gets in Beauty and the Beast.

Now, I’m an extreme reader. Sometimes I wish I could eat books just so I could get the pages in my brain faster.

I’m the kind of person who visits a book shop on a sad day, just to breathe in the smell of other people’s ideas sitting neatly on shelves. The kind of person who has to stop herself from nuzzling up to the person next to me on the bus with a book in their hand and asking them, “Whatchu readin’?” The kind of person who goes straight to a bookshop on pay day, takes a pile of books to the counter and when the bookshop guy says “These for a present?” I say, “Yep, Happy Monday, ME.”

And because the demise of the publishing industry is an unfathomable travesty, I’m always looking for reasons to make people read. So how about this one: Reading makes you a more loveable human being.

Check this headline on a story by Lauren Martin for the Elite Daily:

Why Readers, Scientifically, Are The Best People To Fall In Love With

And this one, by Annie Murphy Paul in Time Magazine:

Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer

Basically, according to science, reading fiction breeds empathy and stimulates the intellect. “Deep reading” — really reading, where you’re completely immersed in a book and you cannot put it down — can make a person calm, introspective and compassionate.

Two academic heavyweights have proven that reading makes you more insightful: Canadian psychologists called Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley say that people who read fiction have heightened empathy and something called a “theory of mind,” which is the ability to hold opinions, beliefs and interests apart from their own.

For a more succinct and instructional version of that argument, John Waters:

Or, if you need visual proof that satiating your curiosity by reading is sexy, James Dean With A Book:

And also this guy, reading and then casually looking out the window like an educated babe:

When in doubt, do as this anonymous attractive man does and read. Make time to read – before bed, before breakfast, instead of television, and on the bus.

You might look up from your book one day and fall in love. With someone holding a book. And a satchel. And dreamy hair caught in the sunshine.

Look, whatever. Just read.

Start with one of these…

Get Reading!

The Little Refugee - Anh Do & Suzanne Do Illustrated by Bruce Whatley

The 26-Storey Treehouse - Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton

Absolution Creek - Nicole Alexander

After the Darkness - Honey Brown

Beneath the Darkening Sky - Majok Tulba

Blood - Tony Birch

Cold Grave - Kathryn Fox

Foals Bread - Gillian Mears

Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East - Benjamin Law

The Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman

My Journey - Jim Stynes

Rotten Gods - Greg Barron

Say You’re Sorry - Michael Robotham

Secrets of the Tides - Hannah Richell

The Boy Who Fell to Earth - Kathy Lette

The Engagement - Chloe Hooper

The Inca Prophecy - Adrian d’Hagé

The Mothers’ Group - Fiona Higgins

The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots - Loretta Hill

The Street Sweeper - Elliot Perlman

Velocity - Steve Worland

Wattle Creek - Fiona McCallum

We All Fall Down - Peter Barry