What can books do for us? Is reading useful? Is it therapeutic? Can

it make us happy? Can it provide us with the spiritual resources

necessary to shield ourselves from adversity? Can literature be

prescribed? Does it benefit both body and soul? Science increasingly

acknowledges the benefits of books. Studies show that the effects

of reading can be equated with those of meditation and medicine.

Readers sleep better, they experience lower levels of stress and

depression and have higher self-esteem than non-readers. Reading

prolongs life and changes us in an essential way; good fiction expands

our horizons, it helps us to understand others better, it teaches us

empathy. Each chapter of Booktherapy is a formula for getting closer

to the authors, the contexts, the fragments and the reflections that

have provided Jordi Nadal — author and editor of these and many

other pages — with a soothing balm in difficult moments and which

have acted as a guide for each important decision. This is a recipe

book for living more lives than just our own, and which serves to

confirm the validity of Montesquieu's words: «I have never known

any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.»