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Joined: Dec 2008 Posts: 160 Location: Kentucky USA
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On the news I recently heard that some of Oprah's book club books were non-fiction, more like autobiographies, and they found out people were actually LYING about things that they wrote about!!! so I guess you are right
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I'm a little ashamed to admit it--must be the indoctrination of an English major--but if the question is decided by the numbers of books I read of each category, I prefer nonfiction. It seems that in the past few decades, nonfiction has developed in interesting ways that fiction can't match. I can become more absorbed, actually, in the treatments authors of nonfiction give their subjects than I usually can in fictional narratives. I do feel I'm neglecting fiction, though, and I think it has a value for people, spiritually, that it would be sad to lose.
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I go through phases. On a given trip to the library I might take out all fiction books or all non-fiction books or a mixture of both. In recent months I have bought more non-fiction books than fiction books, but I've read more fiction books than non-fiction books. This isn't because I don't read the books I buy. It's because I can read a fiction book faster than I read a non-fiction book with the same number of pages. I process them differently. I guess I like both and I can't really quantify how much I like each.
By the way, not everything is either one or the other. What about poetry, or ancient epic, what about journaling or a memoir-novel like "The Things They Carried?" While it may be true, as is said above, that a lot of non-fiction like history and biography or autobiography contains some fiction, some non-fiction is non-fiction and has really little or no element of fiction in it. A book I have on decorative stone simply explains how each kind of stone comes into material being, geologically, where it has been quarried, how it is used and what properties make it useful, what circumstances make it available. I would say that it is non-fiction and that when anything that might be fiction is included (folklore or stories related to stones) the text is pretty clear about that status. It is an example of one kind of non-fiction I really like.
_________________ "Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?"
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
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GR: "A book I have on decorative stone simply explains how each kind of stone comes into material being, geologically, where it has been quarried, how it is used and what properties make it useful, what circumstances make it available."
Does it tell you how to find diamonds if you want, or maybe how to sift gold from a riverbed? I'd love to disappear for a few years and be a hillbilly, living off river gold.
Explanatory non-fiction like that may even have false information. It's the nature of reality, it's hard to achieve the ideal in regards to truth, knowledge, non-fiction, information, etc. Some little nugget of untruth usually manages to weasel it's way into everything. Like sex on the beach.
Joined: Sep 2008 Posts: 340 Location: Eugene, Oregon, USA, Earth.
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I think you mean, "like sand when you're having sex on the beach." (It's just too much fun to nitpick back when you nitpick at me, Interbane).
No, the book doesn't tell you how to go get your own stones out of nature, although I do have some other books about that. This one tells more about names for different types of granites and marbles and other stones used decoratively, with the history of when and where that type has been quaried and used.
Of course it is nothing like exhaustive, but since it's a sourcebook for decorators and designers, it contains a lot of really cool photographs of the insides of all kinds of buildings and tells the names of marbles in mosaics in the floors of palaces and cathedrals, and where the lapis in a famous piece of stone carving was from, and whether those quarries are still active and things like that.
I enjoy it the way I enjoy fiction, because I'm not in the market for most of the stuff in the book, but it's mostly just information, even if it isn't exhaustive or might contain a few errors.
_________________ "Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?"
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
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Edited by Chris O'Connor
While I applaud your ingenuity and creativity I have to ask you to not share your sexual conquests with the community. It does sound like you had a lovely evening.
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Fiction is generally easier for me to read, authors like Tom Clancy or John Grisham, but fiction makes me feel lazy. What I mean is this... our country is in dire straights right now and there's a lot I don't know when watching the news. I've been trying to educate myself on what we called "civics" 100 years ago. I read a lot about the constitution and law, the history of the middle east conflicts, the civil rights era etc. I feel like a patriot and responsible citizen should be educated on what's right, wrong and generally going on with his country. I'm not a zealot or anything, pretty moderate, but I have kids and when they ask me why Israel is bombing Gaza or why they always say "you have the right to remain silent" on police shows, i want to give them an actual answer and not just blow it off... so, non-fiction it is, lately.
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I definitely enjoy NON-Fiction more. However, this might be biased because I have no read much fiction, about 4 books in all. Due to an inflamed desire and motivation to learn about the world for the purpose of bring about change, the only books that help me do this are non-fiction books that teach me about how the world was and is.
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I'm mainly interested in fiction (both in reading and in writing) but I've been reading more nonfiction recently. It really depends now if the book grabs my attention or not.
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fiction vs non
I think good fiction actually makes you think. While non fiction is interesting, and provides knowledge, non fiction gives you the facts. Whereas in fiction, good fiction, the reader must decipher the information.
Also, many writers of fiction are very consious of current events and incorporate them into their works of fiction. "The Road", Cormac McCarthy, makes the reader think about the devastation that might have occured after 9/11. "Slumdog millionaire" shows a graphic dipiction of the dire straits of the "untouchables" in India.
Suzanne[/quote]
_________________ I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth. --William Faulkner
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I definitely LOVE fiction books but I also love to read non-fiction books especially when the books are about occult stuff, archaeological finds, mysteries of the world, history of the world, writing fiction, etc.
Sometimes I turn to fiction when I need to feel something - or want to experience and know something indirectly. Sometimes I can better understand an aspect about life when it comes in the form of fiction.
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It has to be fiction for me. I definitely read more fiction books and I believe the experience that comes from reading a really good fiction book cannot come from a non-fiction one. I suppose it has to do with experiencing art? It's something more than gaining new knowledge, it's a fantastic combination of thoughts and feelings at the same time, that somehow synergistically combine into a whole that far exceeds the sum of them? I suppose other people might feel like that with music or paintings or theatre or anything else, but for me is books.
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Although I do enjoy the increased knowledge from reading Non-Fiction, a book without the spice, drama and mystery from a fiction book just isn't complete. I do not want to read a book that tells me, I want to read a book that shows me. I have a mind for detail, if I am read a book with nothing but facts, sure, i'll learn a lot, but did I enjoy it?
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but I also love to read non-fiction books especially when the books are about occult stuff, archaeological finds, mysteries of the world, history of the world, writing fiction, etc.
