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Cover Letter

Dear reader, there are a few thing I would like you to know before you delve into this

draft. In this final draft, I worked to draw more explicit connections between the scientific facts

and how they affect our perception of best books. I also worked to include a brief discussion of

what one could do with the newfound information, and what kind of conclusions we can draw

from my study. I hope that after you read this paper you leave with a new recognition of how

place affects your reading experience, and perhaps you'll want to reflect on your perfect reading

environment.

I hope you enjoy!

Sara soba
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Sara Soba

Dr. Holt

English Best Books

1 May 2017

The Effect of Environment on Best Book Experience

For a year now, our English class has been studying best books and generating question

after question concerning what makes a book best. Through all of these questions, one in

particular stood out to me: Where is the best place to read? "Where" could mean a multitude of

things though. Where are you physically? At your house? On vacation in Paris? I would sure

think that a place like Paris would make a reading experience magical in some way (isn't that

what the movies say?). Where are you mentally? Are you an adolescent searching for an

identity? A middle-aged person reviving the meaning in life? The environment age, physical

location, and circumstances under which you find a book has a significant effect on a person's

reading experience and their perception of a book as a best book.

To start this inquiry, I first wanted to see what other people thought. To find this out, I set

up a statistical survey in which I chose 50 random people from the population of Galloway

Upper Learning students and faculty and asked them 6 questions about their best book

experience:

1) What is your best book?

2) Is it fiction or nonfiction?

3) How old were you when you read your best book?

4) Was it assigned reading or pleasure reading?

5) Did you read the book at home or on vacation?

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6) Did you read it alone or with a group of people?

Once I gathered this data, I searched for trends in people's experiences.

RESULTS

My results showed that most people read their best books between the ages of 14 and 16, with

24% of people reading their best books at age 15.

Twenty-nine of the 50 participants (58%) read their best books at home. Nine out of the

50 (18%) participants read their best book solely at school. Seven out of 50 (14%) of participants

read their best book while on vacation.

An overwhelming majority (94%) of participants said that their best book was a fiction

text, and 74% of the participants reported that they had chosen their best book as pleasure

reading. Finally, 72% of the participants read their best book individually as opposed to with a

group of people (i.e. a class discussion, summer reading, or book club).

DISCUSSION

The three criteria I focused on were age, physical location, and whether or not the book was

assigned or pleasure reading. I also included a short discussion on fiction versus nonfiction

books.

AGE

Most people read their best books between the ages of 14 and 16 years old. This would

be expected considering that the age of adolescence (roughly between 10 and 19 years old) is

considered to be the most impressionable time period of the human life (Levitin 225). There are
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three important events that contribute to the impressionability of the adolescent mind: 1) the

completion of myelination, 2) strengthening synapses, and 3) tagging of emotional memories.

Myelination is the process in which the axons of the brain are insulated with a fat called

myelin. The presence of myelin insulation helps speed up synaptic transmissions, which results

in faster thinking and processing ability. Myelination occurs from the back of the brain to the

front, meaning that the last region to be connected is the front of the brain, which contains the

prefrontal cortex and the frontal cortex. These areas are where insight, impulse control, and risk-

taking behavior decisions are made ("Why Teens are Impulsive").

During adolescence, the synapses in the human brain are getting stronger because they

are used more often. In fact, the brain receives the most excitation during childhood and teen

years. Thus, it is during these younger years that synapses become the strongest and largest,

resulting in an ability to better remember events from our teen years than those during adulthood

("Why Teens are Impulsive"). This is why we feel that memories from our teenage years are

deeply ingrained in our minds. Another reason that memories often become ingrained during the

teenage years is that the teen environment is emotionally charged. The amygdala and

neurotransmitters in the brain will tag emotional memories as something important. This tagging

of memories is the reason that songs, movies, and other works of art from our teenage years are

often considered to be "our" songs, movies, etc. (Levitin 225).

Just from the discussion of these simple happenings in the adolescent brain, we can easily

see why teenagers are so impressionable. It makes sense that best books are read during these

emotionally intense years because teens are processing faster, strengthening their minds, reacting

strongly to each new piece of information, and also remembering how the entire experience

made them feel. Texts read during the teenage years are certainly influencing the development of
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that person's mind, and when people say that their best book influenced who are they are as a

person, it may not be far off from the truth.

PLACE

The majority of the participants (58%) read their best books at home. Only 14% of the

participants read their best books on vacation. This observation was unexpected for me because

many studies show that vacations have beneficial health affects that may include more

willingness for engagement (Khnel, Jana, and Sonnentag). However, other studies also indicate

that interrupted instruction does not impede student performance in reading nor does it

necessarily result in any gain of reading ability. Upon doing further research, I found that if

vacation were to benefit or hurt reading ability, the gain or loss would be very small (Hagen, iii).

One intriguing bit of research I came across was in This is Your Brain on Music, a book

written by Daniel Levitin, an American-Canadian psychologist and neuroscientist. While I was

reading the book, I thought that the brain might react to music in a similar way that it may react

to books, given that both books and music are forms of expressive art. Levintin explains that

there is a crucial balance between simplicity and complexity that informs a person's preferences

in music. If a song is too simple, it is too predictable and becomes boring to the listener.

However, if a song is too complex and too unpredictable, the song is confusing to the point of

frustration for the listener. The perfect balance of simplicity and complexity will result from a

complex piece that contains moments of predictability that give the listener a sense of order,

comfort, and place (Levitin 229-230). This idea made me wonder whether or not a vacation a

different location from the norm would make a reading experience more "complex" simply

because it removes the reader from their sense of place. If a reader is already challenging
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themselves with a complex and intriguing text, maybe the push to read about new concepts as

well as reside in an unfamiliar place is too overwhelming and complex for the reader to perceive

the experience as enjoyable or a best.

A simpler explanation would be that perhaps the home was more common simply

because people are at their houses for most of the year think about 8 months of school with 4

months total of vacation/break time. Or perhaps students are more likely to read when they are

not on vacation simply because there will most likely be more interesting or exciting activities to

do while on vacation than reading novels.

ASSIGNED VS. PLEASURE READING

Pleasure reading and assigned reading are important factors to consider when discussing

best book experience because they reveal the mental place of the reader. The majority of

participants 74% answered that their best book had been a book that they chose to read for

pleasure as opposed to assigned for a class or for summer reading. There are many factors that

contribute to the observed superiority of pleasure reading over assigned reading. Firstly, it is

important to note that reading helps develop the mind and personality of human beings and

enriches our intellectual lives (Ogbonna, Justina, and Jacintha). For the mind specifically, the

quantity of reading habit affects the development of white matter, a type of tissue in the brain

that is critical to reading and language processes (Takeuchi, Hikaru, et al). As students learn to

enjoy reading, it causes learning to become more relevant in a student's life in a way that results

in improved reading ability and self-concept (Ogbonna, Justina, and Jacintha). Reading books for

pleasure will result in improvements in curiosity and motivation, and people will most likely

enjoy books that are inspiring and lead to an enhanced intellectual life.
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Aside from general improvements in curiosity and motivation that people get from

reading books for pleasure, the independence that people gain from self-selection may also

influence the fact that most best books were pleasure readings. In a study of 12-18 year olds

conducted by a professor at the University of Mississippi, it was found that self-selection had a

statistical impact on students self-perceived pleasure. It was also found that self-selection results

to greater interest in reading overall. The simple act of choosing a book for oneself is an essential

act of independence, especially for many adolescents (Lam). The initial act of independence and

the pleasure that a person gains from the action of self-selection are likely very influential in that

person's approach to reading the text and that person's expectations of the text.

So what about the other 26% of the participants who said that their best book was

assigned? It is important to distinguish that in the previous paragraph's discussion, the term "self-

selection" was used rather than "non-assigned reading." This distinction is critical because it

means that teachers can still meet curriculum expectations, while still allowing student self-

selection. This is the case with about half of the assigned best books. These books were assigned

as summer reading, but the students (assuming that they attended Galloway at the time) were

allowed to choose their summer reading books. This meant that they still gained as much

pleasure from self-selection as those students who read recreationally.

A final factor in selection and its affect on the best book experience is the concept of

trust. In one study conducted by professors at Victoria University of Wellington, it was found

that in addition to personal characteristics and circumstances, trust was a determining factor in

book selection. People often chose books based on recommendations from their friends, family,

other books, or mass media, and trusted that these sources would yield interesting or best books

(Ooi, Kamy, and Chern). This finding raises the question of how much students trust their
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teachers to choose and assign good books for class. If students do not place much trust in a

teacher, the students may already have a negative disposition towards any book that the teacher

assigns, regardless of whether that book really is a great book or not. In this way, trust may play

a critical role in a person's best book experience. If a trusted source recommends a book, it is

probably more likely to be perceived as a best book than one recommended from a distrusted

source.

FICTION VS. NONFICTION

My observations regarding fiction versus nonfiction were certainly the most dramatic,

with 94% (47 out of the 50) of the participants responding that their best book was a fiction

book. This observation intrigued me because I was not expecting such a large preference for

fiction. Although I was not originally planning on including a focus on nonfiction versus fiction

preferences amongst best book experiences, I feel that my results warrant a further discussion.

It is obvious that fiction and nonfiction are completely separate genres, but what exactly

is the purpose of each? Nonfiction is based on real-world events and is often written with the

intent of informing the audience. Nonfiction works include anything from autobiographies, to

self-help, to recipe books. Nonfiction maps out the real world. On the other hand, fiction takes

parts of the real world, then, as Stanford University graduate Deborah Hendersen wrote, "distills

information and passes it on to the reader in an enjoyable and informative way." The purpose of

fiction, firstly and foremost, is to entertain the reader. The second (and almost equally as

important as the entertainment) purpose of fiction is to inform the reader. How do these two

different purposes make fiction better regarding its selection as a best? Fiction places more value

on the imaginative powers of the reader, rather than on the need to be informative (Hendersen).
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This could mean that there is more room for readers to be independent, which may increase the

reader's perceived freedom in interpretation of the text. For adolescents in particular, this

perception of increased freedom and independence would certainly make a book more enjoyable

to read.

In addition to the increased independence that fiction books allow, fiction also asks

readers to be more attentive. In a study conducted by a student at Stanford University, it was

found that people who read narratives labeled as fiction were able to recall 20-50% more words

and details than in narratives labeled nonfiction (NOTE: the same narratives were read, just with

different labels on them) (Hendersen). The "robust fiction superiority effect" (Hendersen) may

have occurred because fiction books are not based in the real world and thus are not as

predictable as nonfiction. The expectation of unpredictability makes the reader more attentive to

the details of the story in order to better recall the story. Furthermore, because the purpose of

fiction is to entertain, remembering the details becomes more important; whereas in nonfiction,

the information itself is most important, thus a short summary of the major happenings would

suffice. The fact that fiction is often more memorable to the reader certainly contributes to the

reader's perception of fiction books as best books. The more memorable a book is, the more

value we will place on that book.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In conducting this inquiry I hoped to gain some insight into what type of place provides

the best environment for the experience of a best book to occur. I interviewed 50 Galloway

Upper Learning community members in hopes of identifying trends in best book experiences.

My results showed that the most common best book experience involved a fiction book chosen
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through self-selection, read during the adolescent years, in the hometown, and read individually.

After conducting this study, some larger conclusions I drew were that the best book

experience is unique for everyone, yet it is still possible to find trends. It may not matter as much

how old you are or where you are reading, but what matters most to people when it comes to best

books is whether that book was self-selected and if that book is fiction. These two findings could

be the foundation for some new criteria for defining best books. Perhaps it is not "A best book

must be fiction" that is the criteria, but rather a best book should allow the reader some freedom

in interpretation. This is just one example of how this study could change our perception of what

makes book best.

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