
Reading More Fiction
A week ago, I read this article about how men are not reading as much fiction as they used to. I found it interesting, because I could relate. My fiction reading has steadily declined since my early twenties, and I’ve spent years reading non-fiction in search of that one special book that changes everything.
I meditated on my reading habits and the books that I’ve read, and I realized that I could name a good majority of the fiction books I’ve read since middle school, but those non-fiction books… I’d be hard-pressed to think of twenty titles, and I’ve read well over a hundred of them, possibly a few hundred.
It made me think, I thought of fiction to be like candy. Something that was tasty, but not nutritionally dense. But if fiction has made a bigger impact than non-fiction, do I have it backwards?
An algorithm picked up on me reading that article, so YouTube recommended a few videos discussing how men were choosing non-fiction over fiction or simply replacing reading with scrolling or video games. Many of these videos came across like they were funded by book publishers trying to entice a dwindling audience, but Mark Manson created a great video about our shorter attention spans, AI, and how books have stopped being a priority.
Reading fiction offers unique benefits that go beyond what nonfiction provides. It builds empathy by letting you see the world through different perspectives, enhancing your emotional intelligence and social understanding. Fiction sparks imagination and creativity, improves language skills, and provides a mental escape from stress. It explores deep human themes—like love, grief, and morality—in ways that feel personal and reflective. Through characters and stories, fiction helps you better understand yourself and others, making it not just entertainment, but a powerful tool for growth and insight.
Empathy is something that is consistently brought up, and it seems like an accurate assessment. By reading, you are visualizing the world through someone else’s eyes, which allows you to experience what they experience. I could see how you could develop more empathy just by practicing seeing from someone else’s point of view.
But instead of focusing on the pros and cons of fiction, maybe we should look at non-fiction. For years, I’ve argued that many non-fiction books should have just been a blog post. Often, the books are three hundred pages with only twenty pages of actual content. The rest are anecdotes and random information. Is this the reason I’ve forgotten so many titles? Were they simply a waste of time?
I believe there may be some truth to that, as much as I hate to admit it. I enjoy reading, and I think I’ve convinced myself for years that the best use of my reading time was bettering myself by reading books that could make a difference in my life. I needed to consume this wise information and apply it to my own life. My time is valuable, and why waste eight hours reading a Stephen King novel, when I can spend eight hours reading two self-help/philosophy/religion books?
But when I think back, and I can’t really tell you much of what I learned, if anything, from these books. They all sort of blend together. But I can tell you the plot points and beats from Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke. I can tell you how much despair I felt reading Willy Vlautin’s The Motel Life or The Night Always Comes. I can remember how shocked I was reading Chad Kulgten’s The Average American Male. I made an emotional connection with these stories, and they found a way to take up space in my mind, whereas most of the non-fiction I’ve consumed has come and gone like a newspaper article.
So, am I saying non-fiction reading is bad? Of course, not. I know I definitely took some lessons from some of these books, and I obviously enjoyed them enough to read them, but in hindsight I feel they left less of an impression than the fiction books I read.
But I would never demonize any sort of reading. I think that is a huge problem with why people don’t read already. For example, outside of my deceased grandmother, I am the only reader in my family. I do not believe anyone, not my parents, my brother, my cousins, aunts, uncles, or other grandparents, ever read a single book outside of school. And I’ve met so many people who say they hate reading, and this hatred originates from our education system forcing students to read uninteresting/outdated stories and demonizing things they may like to read like modern literature, manga, or comic books. This sort of gatekeeping and only teaching the classics (or what the teacher enjoys) does more harm than good. It does nothing to cultivate a love for reading, and I think when people leave school the only memories, they have is trying to force their way through a difficult to understand story, trying to find the exact interpretation from that story that the teacher did, and then passing a test. No wonder folks don’t like to read, that’s miserable.
Thankfully, I read a lot outside of school, so my exposure to stories was not limited to what my underpaid teachers assigned. Outside of Fahrenheit 451 don’t think I read a single book in school that I enjoyed.
So, where has all this contemplation led me? I think I’m going to try and prioritize reading more fiction over non-fiction. I have a massive backlog of books that I’ve wanted to get to, and maybe it’s time to explore some of these titles instead of reading more overly verbose takes on productivity, historical events, or mindfulness.