 Let me start first with the question that's a little bit expansive. Now if we think about fiction for all the wonderful novels we read it actually turns out to be the case the events and those novels didn't actually happen right even especially vivid works like Lord of the Rings right those are not real events. So if we're reading for some reason to to to learn things or be moved emotionally why is it that things that didn't happen have so much power for you or other readers relative to things that did happen? Why is fiction so special? Well I think being not tied down to the actual events allowing the imagination to roam really writers are able to do amazing things and I think that's what we get out of it that nonfiction the description of what has actually happened first of all it's also very difficult to capture just precisely what has happened and often fiction allows you to go beyond that to imagine the reasons behind it which you might not be able to if you were doing just purely following the facts so to speak. But say we think of it in marginal terms you know I'm an economist so if I say well reading Hamlet Shakespeare Dostoevsky Jane Austen of course that was essential for one's own education to speak to other people the core I don't know if you'd quite call them ideas but inspirations and those works move people's lives but at the margin given how much you read and you know I read the fair amount of fiction too how much value is there really for that marginal work of fiction given the regularity of patterns of stories that we see what is it you get out of the marginal work of fiction? Well it varies I mean I have to admit that the great deal that I read I don't get that much out of and you really I think one of the reasons I do read as much as I do is because it really takes that whole mass to really find all the different things you're looking for in it but I definitely think it really it expands my horizons in a way that other things can't travel talking to people meeting people reading the newspaper following current events those things obviously also help you understand the world better but I think fiction adds a totally different dimension to it and truly great fiction really can take you much farther than other things can I think