Read a Novel: The best of Under the Oak Tree

There is no doubt that reading improves vocabulary, sharpens reason, and broadens intellectual horizons. Literature’s benefits have been studied before, but the latest research focuses on how it improves not our IQ, but our EQ.

Under the Oak Tree Plot

It is the shame of the great Croyso family to have a stuttering Maximilian. Maximilian grew up constantly being compared to her step-sister, abused by her father, though she was the first daughter of the family. She grows up with an inferiority complex related to her stutter and physical appearance due to physical and mental abuse she receives from her family. When Maximilian’s father, Duke Croix, received a royal order from the King to battle a dragon, he decided to delegate that responsibility to someone else and got his daughter married to Rifan Calypse, a peasant knight. Thus, Maximilian was coerced into marrying Riftan. On their first night as husband and wife, Riftan left for the expedition without saying a word, and they reunited 3 years later. Riftan goes through extreme measures to push back the royal order to come to the city for a victory ceremony, just to pick up his wife Maximilian. What would Maximilian think of him when he returns?

Web novel

Under the Oak Tree is a web novel by Kim Suji that is set in South Korea. It has been serialized in RIDI Corporation’s digital comic and fiction platform RIDIBOOKS since January 17, 2017. The first season ended on March 5, 2018. On March 12, 2018 the spin-off was released, and on July 19 of the same year it was completed. The following day, September 16, a special spin-off was released. The second season began on May 3, 2019 but is currently inactive due to health issues with the author

There is a deep emotional bond between book lovers and fiction, and scientists are increasingly trying to determine why fiction is so good for mental health. The New School for Social Research discovered three years ago that reading literary fiction (distinguished from popular fiction) increased one’s understanding of “theory of mind”-basically, the ability to perceive another person’s thoughts or feelings.

Study participants who read short stories performed better on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), which asks them to look at photos of subjects’ eyes and identify what they are feeling (for instance: arrogant, annoyed, upset or terrified). Several headlines claimed that even reading a few pages of a short story could improve your empathy.

They Eyes Were Watching God, for example, is a 20th century masterpiece that speaks to not just love but also religion, race, feminism, and folklore, in addition to being a nearly perfect work of art. Nevertheless, readers can gain so much from these books precisely because they cannot be reduced to a single theme or lesson. According to Berthoud, a truly great novel gets into your subconscious and affects you from the inside out.