Non-fiction – Business or Pleasure?

[Lucius]

We talk a lot about various aspects of fiction writing, and are likely to continue doing just that, but for now let's turn our attention to non-fiction.

We all read non-fiction, and I'm not about noticing stop signs on the road! We even write it! But I guess some of us are inclined towards texts of that nature linked to their work and hobbies while others read for pure pleasure of learning new things about the world.

My preference is for history books and biographies -- yet perhaps these branches of non-fiction are closest to fiction, not least because they are a battlefield. Some texts, especially when there's sociology thrown in, may earn their authors a cancellation in the modern Western sense, and I presume they still 'cancel' historians the old way in North Korea! Exile is perhaps the most common, falling somewhere in between.

Quite a lot of popular history books -- in the West, much less than, say, in the 1930s, but here parts of the world do differ -- are designed to validate and strengthen their readers' beliefs regarding past glories of their native land and black perfidy of their neighbours. The inherent danger of such an approach is obvious.

The other pitfall is to judge the past by the standards of the present and portray it as one network of crimes stretching back in time to the ancients -- thank you ever so much, Hegel, for your 'world history is the world's court of judgement'! Too many judges now, I'd say...

The one unmistakably positive development of historical science in the last century or so has been studying the lower strata of societies in greater depth -- and not only because those works help us write historical ravishment! There are flies in the ointment here as well -- without subscribing to the 19th-Cen. theories of great men, it isn't difficult to state that one day in the lives of Caesar, Trajan or Constantine often left much greater mark on the world than the lives of entire generations of agricultural slaves in, say, Northern Italia.

And yet I'm drawn to history books and bios, pitfalls be damned! I want to try to understand what went down at the hinge points of the history -- I've mentioned to @Claire once that if the Europe of 1930 was assured that the Great War was the last military conflict of such magnitude and that disarmament was around the corner, the Europe of 1935 was busy preparing for the next one. I want to see the glimpses of many personalities I'm interested in too.

Which kinds of non-fiction do you prefer?

[Vela Nanashi]

I read all kinds of science, coding, math type things when it comes to nonfiction and sometimes I go wantering along links in wiki and other places and read a bunch of very loosely connected things I like feeding my brain as much stuff as I can, these days I am too senile though so most slides off, but it is at least interesting during reading and understanding and playing with the concepts, and some traces still stick that are useful

[SoftGameHunter]

For many years I read almost no fiction outside of forums like this. History was very much my preferred topic, and I picked up an undergraduate degree in the field just because I felt like it. I've never earned any money off it (not counting one time a family member gave me a free supper to write a short paper on Eisenhower's leadership style, due by the end of the week).

I'm very happy to see that the profession (which at one time I did consider trying to join) has moved away from an exclusively 'great man' model, and now offers abundant information and study of previously under-considered groups. Sadly, I think they've gone a bit nuts in trying to study everything except great events and people. We don't have to see history as a string of crimes by the elites to still fail to put everything in its proper context. So, yes, women make up half of all humans ever to exist, but they didn't account for half of the major decisions and actions that made a difference in how civilizations changed over time. The peasantry accounted for upwards of ninety percent of all people in many societies, but it was kings, lords, churchmen, and officers that had the power to act with autonomy. This actually gets incredibly complicated as you peel it back, but the end result is that these days there seems to be a resistance in the history profession to studying anything the average Joe might find interesting. But this isn't the History thread, so there's no need to prattle on.

[Lucius]

I read all kinds of science, coding, math type things when it comes to nonfiction

How much of your non-fiction reading is work-related, you'd say?

and sometimes I go wantering along links in wiki and other places and read a bunch of very loosely connected things

I know the feeling -- I start going through the endnotes of a scholarly book and end up with another ten to read skim through.

I like feeding my brain as much stuff as I can, these days I am too senile though so most slides off, but it is at least interesting during reading and understanding and playing with the concepts, and some traces still stick that are useful

Something always sticks, yep.

[Vela Nanashi]

I enjoy science, math and coding and such so I say none of it is work

[Lucius]

I enjoy science, math and coding and such so I say none of it is work

Work doesn't exclude enjoyment, it even helps with the masochistic aspect. :D

[Vela Nanashi]

True but I am ancient and retired and barely functional for anything predictable, you would have to be both insane and extremely patient to hire me, I do not function on a schedule at all so it is all hobby, sure some things are more practically useful things, like coding and math and some of the science, but then one might say if I was a writer/author who sold books then my writing would be work, and reading fiction could be research for work so it all depends on how you classify things

[Lucius]

... This actually gets incredibly complicated as you peel it back, but the end result is that these days there seems to be a resistance in the history profession to studying anything the average Joe might find interesting. But this isn't the History thread, so there's no need to prattle on.

Prattling not detected! I'd say that 'interesting bits' are studied still, but writing a new life of, say, Louis XI might well be seen as somehow inferior to doing a book on the life of peasant wenches in a Languedoc village in 1450-1500...

[Claire]

I'm not sure whether I can really categorize my non-fiction reading. There are scientific papers but let's forget about those for now. If I think abou non-fiction books my reading can vary quite a lot. I had a lot of fun with Randall Monroe's What if?, Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking helped me understand my own introversion better and spoke to a part of my soul, and Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (I like the German title Trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen more) is one of the most thought provoking and moving books I've read. And I wonder what I would think about Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion if I read it again today.

History is a field I always think I should know more about but I don't really know where to start reading because I don't have a strong preference for one historical period over another. I would also like to delve deeper into the theory of evolution some time. I didn't care much about biology as a subject in school because I had a horrible teacher. But looking back, I always regretted that I didn't pay more attention in biology class. And one topic that I might have read too much about in the last few years is climate change. If you want to get an idea what climate change really means, read Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency by Mark Lynas. But be warned, it will ruin your mood.

[SoftGameHunter]

When I developed an interest in history, I approached it systematically. History begins at the beginning, so I went to Border's Books (RIP) and bought a book on Sumerian history. Then another. After that, I moved to ancient Egypt. Then some classical ancient Greece. And so on. That was my approach for several months, and I regret nothing.