I’ve been thinking about why fictional books matter. Do they? Why read? What would happen if we could no longer read stories? Fiction readers would live like people who choose not to read. A world of the here and now only, a world where one doesn’t join the dreams of others. There are a lot of people in the world who do this, a few who I know well. They are often happy. So if a person experiences the real world in the now, what have they given up? I’ve…