I am pleased to have guest posted for Henry Oliver:

“An economist asks: What is the value of reading great literature like Eliot and Tolstoy?”

In 2025, after mostly feeling too busy for great literature for a few years, I picked up two books that come highly recommended by people with good taste: Middlemarch and Anna Karenina. They are excellent, and they are long. I propose two reasons why they need to be long.

My second reason for long novels:

The second powerful thing about a long novel, if they are written by geniuses like Eliot or Tolstoy, is that you have enough time to see how choices play out over years. You have space to even see the consequences of the consequences. You will experience moral formation from these novels in a way that you just cannot from a 2-hour movie or social media post. 

Quick bio of Henry: Henry Oliver writes the popular literary Substack The Common Reader, which has been quoted in the Atlantic and elsewhere. His book Second Act, a study of late-blooming talent, was released in 2024.

Lastly, I must thank my sister for engaging me in literature discussion over the Christmas break. She is reading Proust.