Fantasy Books Helped Me Grow as a Person More Than Any Self-Help Book Ever Did

I used to love reading self-help and personal development books. At the time, they inspired me and made me feel like I was bettering myself. And maybe they did help, to an extent. But as the self-help industry boomed and the market flooded with celebrity-written books bearing gimmicky titles and cookie-cutter advice, I became a bit jaded and stopped reading them.

Then in the fall of 2022, I picked up a fantasy book on a whim after a years-long fiction hiatus and got hooked on the genre. While it was more for escapism than anything else, many of these books changed my brain chemistry in meaningful ways. In fact, I have grown more as a person since becoming a fantasy reader than I had the past decade when I was reading all those personal growth books.

If you’re wondering how that can be true, here are the ways fantasy has helped expand my mind in the last two years.

Encourages Objective Critical Thinking About Complex Topics

There’s a quote from one of my favorite fantasy books that I think about a lot:

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

– Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, page 806.

It’s a character in the book who says it, but it’s very meta because the book itself achieves this beautifully, presenting complicated situations that make you ask yourself questions without trying to shoehorn in a black-and-white answer.

Of course, some fantasy books are more heavy-handed with the “moral of the story” but regardless, there are many complex themes in these books that are relevant to real life, and we probably don’t give enough thought to them because they don’t directly affect us in our day-to-day life. (Or if they do, we don’t realize it.)

We all have biases, whether we’re aware of them or not. Our personal experiences and cultural backgrounds heavily influence how we perceive the world. So it’s often difficult to be objective about life because we are living it from the same perspective day after day.

But fantasy books – particularly high fantasy – take you away from everything you know and introduce you to new worlds with their own political landscapes, cultures, and people. And we can learn about this world while circumventing our preconceived notions and ideas because the story isn’t about real people or places.

For instance, epic fantasies are often chock-full of heavy themes surrounding injustice, oppression, power imbalances, and moral dilemmas. And while these are the same issues we deal with in our own society, presenting them in a fantasy setting gives the reader some distance from their real-world biases.

Fantasy books with such themes also get you thinking critically about important questions you never even thought to ask. For example, the foremost theme in Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang explores intent versus outcome and the sometimes stark differences between the two.

R.F. Kuang’s Babel explores the moral implications of resisting oppression with violence. (I’m still chewing on that one and I read it nearly two years ago.)

Honestly, these are topics I never thought about much before I started reading these kinds of books. However, asking myself these questions has resulted in far more self-awareness. I find myself being less quick to judge real-life situations because I’m more inclined to look for the bigger picture and understand the different sides of it.

Fosters Creativity

Fantasy books are a veritable jungle gym for your brain, allowing it to suspend disbelief and conjure up new places and beings that don’t exist. Immersing yourself in imaginary environments both bolsters and influences your creativity, whether your preferred medium is painting, music, writing, or other kinds of art.

It has done wonders for my own creative outlet, which is writing. Two years ago, I was beginning to think I wasn’t capable of writing a full-length novel. I had tried many times before and always gave up around 10,000 words into it.

But the more fantasy I read, the more inspired I became.

Around this time last year, I finally made it to the word “the end” of a 65,000-word first draft. And right now, I’m about 70,000 words deep into a new fantasy novel – one I fully intend to publish within the next year or so.

I’ve read books about writing, watched writing lessons on YouTube, and even took a creative writing class in school. While they were all worthwhile, I know I would never have made it this far without reading all those great fantasy books — simply because nothing else stokes the fires of my creativity like they do.

Builds Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

There’s an old adage that you don’t really know someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Well, reading fantasy books allows you to temporarily take up residence in the minds of characters vastly different from yourself. Even though they don’t exist, a well-written character is multi-dimensional enough that you feel as if they do.

You follow them closely as you learn about their ideas, experiences, struggles, victories, feelings, and pains. And by the time you reach the end of their story, you almost feel as if you’ve lived it yourself. It can change how you view other people who are having a different life experience than you.

One of my favorite examples of this is the characters in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. The main character, Kaladin, struggles with depression throughout the entire series, and it is captured in such a realistic way that many readers who have struggled with depression themselves say that it describes exactly what it is like for them.

As a teenager, I struggled with depression but it has been decades since I have felt like that, and reading about Kaladin’s struggles reminded me how difficult it is for people with depression to function when they are suffering from a depressive episode.

There is another complex character from the same series that affected me greatly. In order to avoid spoilers, I won’t say who it is, but they are portrayed as an honorable hero at the start of the series, and then as the series progresses, you learn more about their past and how deeply flawed they are.

If I had known everything about this character right from the start, I might have labeled them an irredeemable villain. But because of the way the story unfolds from their viewpoint, I had far more compassion for them by the time their past caught up with them.

I find such character arcs to be important lessons in empathy and they help me strive to be less judgemental of other people.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Fantasy Books

Read enough fantasy books and you will likely benefit from it naturally. But if you’re looking for a few pointers on how to get the most out of your fantasy reads, here are a few things that work well for me:

Seek Literary and Character-Driven Fantasy

Not all fantasy books are equal – A lot of them are just plain fun, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! But if you are specifically interested in stories that make you stare at the ceiling afterward and contemplate life, you’ll want to hone in on books that dig a bit deeper into complex topics.

There are lots of sub-genres that tend to naturally fall into his category, like dark academia, political fantasy, historical fantasy, grimdark, and epic fantasy.

Annotate as You Read

Annotating helps you absorb what you’re reading better and encourages you to contemplate passages rather than just race through the pages. Instead of just reading the book, you’re interacting with it!

I used to think annotating was only for scholarly types, but it’s a surprisingly easy and enjoyable practice. The best part is there’s no wrong way to annotate books, only what works best for you!

If you’re intimidated by the idea, just start with some colored annotation tabs and use them to flag any passages that you find particularly interesting. Once you’ve found your stride, you can try adding marginalia. Marginalia can be anything you want, from how a passage made you feel, to expanding on the ideas you think the author was trying to say.

I only started annotating my books this year, but now that I’ve started I’ll never stop. It’s great for finding your favorite parts later or when you want to find a particular quote quickly. It’s also fun to reread a year later and see how your perceptions and ideas have changed since your first read-through.

Discuss What You Read with Others

Sharing your thoughts about the books you’ve read with other people is one of the most fulfilling parts of reading, especially when the person you are discussing it with has a different take than you. Sometimes, you can learn things about themes and characters that you might not have realized on your own.

Of course, you need to find someone to discuss the books with. While a book club seems like the obvious answer, it’s not feasible for some people. (I live in a small town and there aren’t too many book clubs around here.)

However, there are lots of online communities where you can engage in discussions about the books you read, like Fable, Reddit, and Quora. If you Google Search the book you read and type “discussion” you can find forums or threads that way as well.

Final Thoughts

I don’t read fantasy books for the purpose of self-betterment, but it’s a fringe benefit that makes me enjoy my hobby even more.

If you now find yourself eager to pick up a transformative work of fantasy and are looking for some top-tier options, I’ll leave you with this reading list of fantasy books I highly recommend:

• Babel by R.F. Kuang
• The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
• The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson
• The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
• The Sword of Kaigen by M.L Wang
• Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang
• The Will of the Many by James Islington
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab