Reading research

Surrealism improves learning skills
Reading Franz Kafka’s The Country Doctor or watching Blue Velvet by director David Lynch could make you smarter, according to research by psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia. Exposure to surrealism apparently enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions.
Travis Proulx & Steven J. Heine. (2009). Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar. Psychological Science (Sept.), p 1125-1131.