“Good literature substitutes for experience which we have not ourselves lived
through.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I think that the speaker means that literature can give us the experience of something that we have not yet done. Our lives may be incomplete in some ways, but literature can help fill those holes. You don't' need to have lived through something to experience it.
This quote relates to the book I'm reading because of Merry and Pippin. These two halflings want to be on the adventure that Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are on, but they are of restricted of that privilege. Meanwhile they are in the woods with Treebeard, instead of with their true friends.