[enraged_camel]

Most books you can read "for pleasure" are stories about people, their interactions, struggles, aspirations and conflicts. Reading such books helps you better empathize with other people and relate to them, even if you yourself have not personally experienced what they are going through.

I'll give you a random example that popped in my head: there are a ton of similarities between office politics today and the society the kids set up for themselves in Lord of the Flies. For a long time I could not make sense of the former, until I read the latter a second time, but this time outside of a school's "standard reading" context. Only then did I appreciate the power of the book's social commentary and its applications to a large variety of social settings (including, as I mentioned, the workplace).