I’m participating in Armchair BEA all this week. If you’re a new visitor here, you can learn more about myself and my blog on my About page or my Armchair BEA Intro post.
The current topic of discussion is nonfiction.
For as much as I try to read a variety of books and occasionally stretch beyond my comfort zone, there are two big areas where I’m lacking. One, which I mentioned on Tuesday, is books written before the turn of the (last) century. The other is nonfiction.
I hardly read any nonfiction. Sometimes I’ll get the itch to continue my music education, and then I’ll get some composer biographies or other history or analysis… but I consider it more study or research than “reading.” I mean, obviously it’s still reading, but I approach these books completely differently from the books I read for pleasure.
The main reason I don’t read more nonfiction goes back to the reason I read in the first place — entertainment and escape. On the whole, novels fulfill this purpose better than most nonfiction. The one possible exception would be the “humorous memoir” category, and it figures that the one nonfiction book I’ve read in the last five years is Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. It was entertaining, no doubt; it made me literally laugh out loud, to the point where my husband thought I was going crazy. And it was a kind of escape too, but always there was the thought in the back of my mind that it was all real, the good and the bad. And that makes it… different.
Of course it’s not a bad thing to relate to another real person out there in the world. But I get so much of that reading blogs… which I like even better, because I can actually respond and have a dialogue with the person.
I probably could stand to explore more nonfiction, beyond my main area of interest. But reading these books will always be a separate activity for me. When I think of curling up in a comfy chair with a good book… I’ll always be thinking of novels.
Am I alone in my feeling that reading nonfiction is a completely different activity from losing yourself in a fictional world?
Cheap Thrills 
Even though I read and love nonfiction, I totally get what you mean about sinking and losing yourself in a book. I can do that with novels really easily, but sometimes it is harder with nonfiction (often, I think, because I know I’m going to want to review it later). But there are some authors that are just amazing and telling stories (even true ones) that I lose myself anyway. It just takes some time to find them :)
The funny thing is you’d think true crime would be right up my alley, but it holds no appeal for me whatsoever. Thanks for the recommendations on your blog, I’ll be sure to check them out. And thanks for stopping by!
I have a big weakness for true crime. I don’t know, it’s really voyeuristic and creepy and disconcerting, but I pick those kinds of books up all the time. I hope at least one of those recommendations is good :)
I’m the same way, I almost never read non fiction and when I do, it’s usually a memoir. I think the cure for that would be to find some good narrative non fiction. I am a huge fan of the book Columbine and I’d probably enjoy other books written in a similar fashion.
I’m hesitant to read narrative nonfiction because I feel like I won’t be able to stop judging the story like it’s fiction. But I suppose that’s not really a good enough reason to not even try it. Thanks for stopping by!
I loved Let’s Pretend this never Happened too! I don’t usually read too much “heavy” non-fiction, but I do like to mix things up sometimes and enjoy memoirs and such.
Even for my lighter reads I typically stick to fiction but I’d just heard so many good things about this book, and though I’m not a constant reader I do enjoy popping onto her blog from time to time. I realized in writing this post that reading blogs, personal ones anyway, is like reading snippets of a memoir.
I’m exactly the same, I usually read memoirs for nonfiction, like Let’s Pretend this Never Happened or Laurie Notaro’s I Love Everbody and Other Atrocious Lies. But I did read some narrative nonfiction in college that I enjoyed, one that was about the Twin Towers and another about journalism from a crime lens.
The Jenny Lawson book was so good. I love it when writers can bring light to hard subjects. Like Allie Brosh’s comics about depression. Hers is another book I need to read.