Why do we read novels?

“The wind is blowing.
“Taking everything and leaving everything behind.”
“If snow is the silence that falls from the sky, then rain may be the endlessly long sentences that fall from the sky.”

These wonderful sentences come from a novel by Nobel Prize winner Han Kang.
How would we encounter sentences like these if we didn't read novels? In this way, novels offer us beautiful and emotional language, or words imbued with life philosophy and wisdom.
Just as you watch a drama and get immersed in the interesting story, novels also contain interesting stories.
Additionally, the novel features a variety of people, showing the diverse conflicts and lives that humans experience.
We enter the world created by the novel and experience the protagonist's emotions indirectly, feeling sorry for them and even feeling sorry for them.
The very important emotions that we learn in life, namely the ability to understand the world and others, are naturally learned through the process of reading novels.
You can also develop wisdom and the power of thought through the thoughts and actions of the characters that appear under the author's meticulous calculations.
This is why reading good novels during adolescence is so important.

--- From the "Preface"