Hiralious

Reading about human psychology and how our minds interpret environment and even the statistics presented to us, leads me to believe that we are always primed by the influence we surround ourselves by. It is research based support of the age old wisdom like ; a man is known by the company he keeps., your friends determine your destiny and so on.
This enables me to have an insight about why, despite having the potential i couldn't acheive some of the things i had wanted to.acheive. But more than friends and family, what had influence on me was reading.
Some things we read leave us with a bad after taste, some books help us learn something, some books make us imagine and in doing that , make us more imaginative. Some books may turn our life around. I have read books in all categories. . 
You are reading Elif Shafak and you identify with the solemn protagonist who always has layers to what she says, who exists in a perpetual melancholy, who does not love freely and is very stubborn about her grudges. Now against a backdrop of a compelling story, and under the magic of the beautiful words you may adopt her identity. This can go as far as you embodying the characters you read about. I wouldnt say whether its good or bad. A person has to decide for himself/ herself. I for one, would choose not to read the books that make me dull like that.
Reading Bertrand Russel made me a better person. I learnt what is jealousy, and how self centered we can be while imagining ourselves to be selfless. I learnt that sadness or boredom with life was not necessarily a wiser behavior. I attribute a lot of the good i have ( if i have it) to him.
Reading fantasy , of which Harry Potter books were the first, gave me an imagination, and the ability to exist in a fantastical world on short escapes from reality.
I may not speak on behalf of all readers, but we have to.choose the books we read carefully. All the time spent reading books is still 'spent' somewhere and we may be paying the cost with a potentially amazing future for us.