Fiction vs. Non-Fiction vs. Grazing Omniverously On All Books

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This came up a long time on ILE, but it's a good question.

Do you tend towards reading predominantly fiction or predominantly non-fiction? Or do you not discriminate?

Are there certain genres which skew your choices? (For example, if you read mainly Fiction, but perhaps a large amount of music and music bio books skew your choices towards Non-Fiction?)

Please feel free to back up your choices with particularly good examples of either Fiction or Non Fiction...

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Oscillate wildly. Right now all fiction, but often autobiographical fiction. I don't see a massive divide between the two. Publishers do, so the distinction holds.

― Enrique (Enrique), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:37 (twenty-two years ago)

you read oscar wilde?

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:41 (twenty-two years ago)

just kidding.

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm gonna read his 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' soon -- 0UP May 2004 peace out.

― Enrique (Enrique), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Fiction and travel. Loads of travel books. Love 'em. The good ones are double pleasure. Read them first to inspire you to go somewhere. Read them when you come back to compare experiences.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:43 (twenty-two years ago)

This is interesting because when I took Writing the Literature of Fact in grad school (snoooooze) there was a big debate over what was actually non fiction versus fiction. With the New Journalism (the idea that facts could be told in 'story' form, see Truman Capote's In Cold Blood as the definitive example of this), all non-fiction has become significantly more interesting to read, but the question is how reliable is it?
A lot of people assert that a lot of non-fiction is fictitious because the writer *wasn't there* to experience it, so all the details are made up and therefore it becomes fiction. Like, how did Capote know where Percy kept his boots in In Cold Blood? Well, he didn't, he just guessed. But it contributes to the overall impact of the story's retelling.

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I rather like travel essays but I became a bit soured on the genre after reading McCarthy's Bar. Man was that guy a self-righteous twat....

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to read nothing but fiction. (Well, except for the occasional skewing art book and supposedly non-fictional conspiracy/Freemasons stuff, but really, that's fiction, too, isn't it?)

But my partner reads absolutely nothing but Non-Fiction - mainly science books and art books and philosophy books and philosophy of art and science books - so I started picking up some things that he reccomended.

The book that brought me back round to non-fiction was actually "The Selfish Gene" - I know there are hatahs around here, but it was so beautifully written that I read it start to finish, like a novel.

(Aside - if there are any people who prefer non-fiction, do you read those books cover to cover, or do you skim, and dip in, as if you were using them for research material?)

I also like books that are novels, but are so perfectly researched and realised that they read like non-fiction, such as The Name Of The Rose. I skimmed a book on medieval heresy the other day, and it was astonishing how accurate TNOTR was!

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Unfortunately, Bill Bryson opened up travel writing with witty observations. In his wake trail the McCarthys of the world. I did like the bit on the first page where he talks about buying dope from ultra-orthadox jews because he thought they were rastafarians. Then it gos downhill.

It always makes me laugh to see travel filed as non-fiction.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 11:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Borders actually has a special section within travel for this new brand of travel book. but then again they don't have a Non-Fiction section, or a Biography section, although they do have a Fiction section, which puts all the author biographies right next to their works.

I tried watching one of Bill Bryson's shows and found him incredibly dull. I take it his prose voice sparkles more?

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:13 (twenty-two years ago)

He's the opposite to flamboyant if such a word exists. I like his voice, it's melodic and understated and the humour is in what he leaves unsaid.

His books seem a little dated now. Travel is one of those genres where books date so fast.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:17 (twenty-two years ago)

And, interestingly enough, can move right onto the history shelf. See Lady Montagu's letters, for example.

How easy do you think it is to publish a travel memoir?

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Easy. It's publishing a good one that's the tricky bit. Having just read Thesiger's Arabian Sands, you realise that you don't even need action to drive it along. It's all in the writing. Another good example are the books on the arctic / antarctic. There's an unvarying landscape to describe, but the writing is brilliant (see Cherry-Garrard, Sara Wheeler etc).

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 19 December 2003 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Would it be a cop-out if I said that while I do read fiction for the most part I also read tons of reportage/essays/crit/lengthy rants each and every month? Heck, we even subscribe to Discover for our monthly science lesson. There was a piece on Iraq in the New Yorker a little while back that I read that was easily novella-length. I mean I read more than a lengthy book's worth of newspaper and magazine writing every month and sometimes every week. Here's a for instance: This week's New Yorker has a long piece on the mysteries surrounding Federico Garcia Lorca's disappearance and execution in Granada. And I'm looking forward to reading it. BUT, i'm afraid if there were a 300 page book on the same subject I might pass it by.So, there you go.(I have already read the Lorrie Moore story in the same issue though-It's great!) And when i do read non-fiction books they tend to be literary in nature. whether litcrit/history or books like Joseph Mitchell's Joe Gould's Secret or Simon Winchester's mad dictionary-writer book. Both those books read like fiction(and one has been made into a movie and the other is in the process of becoming one) That's probably why for travel-writing I would choose to read someone like Bruce Chatwin.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 19 December 2003 13:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Non-fiction about fiction, (Crits, journals, etc.) now that is a weird meta-thing there. That's very interesting indeed.

It's kind of both, and throws up a new category alltogether - i.e. criticism.

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 19 December 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

(It's like Mushrooms and Protozoa and viruses coming up to destroy my lovely crisp Animal and Plant kingdoms!)

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 19 December 2003 14:00 (twenty-two years ago)

IS Winchester's OED book being made into a movie? I thought that book was way less salicious than it should have been.

Also, what category do lit magazines the size of novels fit in, like Granta or Tin House?

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 14:38 (twenty-two years ago)

IS Winchester's OED book being made into a movie?

Wow! I thought you worked for 'em Catty?

― Enrique (Enrique), Friday, 19 December 2003 14:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh no, I don't work for the OED! I work for a Very Large Image Company that buys other image companies.

― Catty (Catty), Friday, 19 December 2003 15:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Safe, right -- I inferred wrong from the 'crunk' thread.

― Enrique (Enrique), Friday, 19 December 2003 15:22 (twenty-two years ago)

not the new winchester book, of course. but then they are both about the OED so i guess they could use both for a movie. although, i think he actually wrote the screenplay too and only from the professor and the madman book. could be good cinematic stuff. the civil war & murder & creepy 19th century bughouses all seperately make for good movies. i could have sworn that i heard that mel gibson was gonna play the mad doctor, but don't quote me on that.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 19 December 2003 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

i just looked it up on google. sez mel is in it and it's directed by john boorman. didin't say winchester wrote the screenplay. that's something i seem to remember in an interview i heard with him on the radio, but i could be wrong.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 19 December 2003 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I was just thinking today when I was reading that Antrim piece in the New Yorker that I'd LOVE to read fiction that read as nonfiction.

― jaymc (jaymc), Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I read 90% non-fiction - it's always the first bit I look at in the 'new books' section of a shop. I'm fairly omnivorous when it comes to non-fiction too: art, science, sport, history, music, philosophy and other cultural stuff.

When I do read fiction I almost always enjoy it, I don't know exactly why I don't read more. I think it's that my book time seems fairly limited and I prefer the n-f.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:40 (twenty-two years ago)

fiction right now but I do read read music books too.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 22 December 2003 00:41 (twenty-two years ago)

two weeks pass...

I have to sneeze--!!

I read non-fiction almost exclusively. It's hard for me to get interested in fiction, and even when I find something I kind of like, it's usually easy for me to put the book aside and never find out what it was all about. I tend to read because I want answers to questions, or because I want material to bolster my argument on some point, or because something has caught my curiosity.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Wednesday, 7 January 2004 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I am a grazer in both fields.

In the field of non-fiction I find I am attracted to works that connect facts, rather than merely present them. The facts can be connected by an intellectual thread, by building a thesis or arguing for a theory, or they can be connected by a narative thread, such as telling a history from a clear point of view. But there must be connective tissue or it might as well be a bag of gravel for all I care.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 7 January 2004 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I read both but generally not at the same time. I find a subject and read three of four related books. Most of my non-fiction seems to be historical rather than contemporary. Guess there is just an overload of current stuff in my mailbox or maybe I would rather not spend my escape time in the present.

― (sallying), Wednesday, 7 January 2004 23:01 (twenty-two years ago)

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