A Yale team followed 3,635 older adults for 12 years and found book readers outlived non-readers by 23 months, but the paper is explicit that this is the unadjusted number, and the gap shrinks sharply once education, wealth and health are counted

The claim that reading fiction is good for your brain and adds years to your life shows up everywhere, usually attached to a single number: book readers live almost two years longer. It comes from a real study, and the number is real. It is also the version o…