February 18, 2016 
Erin 
President Obama, while talking on the subject of empathy and how it helps him be a better president and citizen, said in an interview with The New York Review of Books, “The most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy…And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”
I don’t mean to quote this to be political, but his words stood out to me because he said everything I feel about novels. This is why I read. I love being able to get into the head of another person—even if that person isn’t real. It allows me to understand the world through another perspective, and this is tantamount to better understanding other people.
We all have different lives and different obstacles that lead to the same emotions. While you may not be able to understand how it feels to say, be a war refugee, if you read about the pain another is experiencing, those feelings can be understood because no matter your economic status, your race, your nationality, you have the same raw emotions as every other person on this earth—that’s what connects us.
Empathy grows through every novel we read. We chip away at the mystery of humanity with every word. So what are you waiting for?
What books have taught you to be more empathetic?
You ask, “What books have taught you to be more empathetic?”.
To be very honest: my own.
Writing a book in which the protagonist is a money-hungry womanizer, I had to determine what redeeming grains of human value remained in this person, depraved though he may seem, and I had to present them to the reader. While there is much to despise about this character, he must have that Something to spark the reader’s empathy, or the book will never be read.
It’s a tricky tightrope walk, but an interesting challenge.
This is in reply to Da Costa’s comment. “Money hungry womanizer” that is what caught my attention. My novel, which I’m currently querying, has a similar main character: a playboy who is a blackmailer of women. No worries, my book is set in Pakistan. However, the challenge was massive. The easy way out, which I first tried, was to make the playboy a fascinating, fun character, but essentially a bad apple.
As I wrote and rewrote, I realised the story didn’t work that way because of the circumstances I had created. Then came the gruelling task of creating empathy for a person who had his own interests at heart, but still needs to change. The vehicle for change though is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. No easy task. And it’s made me turn more than a few black hair to grey.
As to Erin’s question: Every novel (or should it be character?) that I have read and still remember, or remember the feelings it inspired in me has given me a heightened awareness of living life in that person’s skin. From drama such as Color Purple to satire like Catch 22, it doesn’t matter. East of Eden, The City of Joy, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I can go on and on, but I should stop.