Antworten zum Universum

Oh look, I have a blog. A couple of nights ago, I had a wonderful dinner with a good firend and the topic of reading came up many times. I mentioned that I have stopped reading fiction, and instead, I’m concentrating on non-fiction instead. Maybe some day I’ll pick up fiction again, who knows.

In my opinion, there are really, only two ways of reading things. And these two ways can easily be approximated by the classes of books out there. There are generally only 2 superclasses of books – fiction and non-fiction, and you’d only read books with roughly these two mindsets.

Let’s say, for now, that I am correct, and there are only two ways of reading a book (or article) – you can read it like reading a non-fiction, or you can read it like fiction. The actual genre or class of the book doesn’t really matter.

Reading fiction is quite different from reading non-fiction. Ask yourself what the difference is when the last time you switched between reading non-fiction and fiction (the last time for me was in October, when I stopped reading Sala-i-Martin et al.’s Determinant of Long Term Growth; and picked up Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals (apparently I got the limited edition cover too!)). My mindset sort of switched gears. I thoroughly enjoyed reading both, but I was also very aware that my approach to them both were very different.

When reading fiction, the mind is less preoccupied with external logic and correctness. This is because the mind is aware of the construct of the fiction – that it is entirely fictional. The mind is less analytical (perhaps not when reading Agatha Christie’s books – but that’s the effect of a good author) when reading fiction, where as when reading non-fiction, even when it’s light reading like Superfreakonomics (you can read my review of Superfreakonomics when you’re done with this article), the mind starts probing for all sorts of errors or logical inconsistencies.

Now, I am not saying that there is a discrete barrier between reading fiction and non-fiction. Both give utility when reading (which is why I prefer to read epics and comedies instead of tragedies¹ – in that I like to come out from reading fiction feeling happy and not depressed) – fiction feeds the imagination, and non-fiction feeds knowledge. Both fiction and non-fiction also evokes emotion, though arguably less in the latter (it’s quite hard to get any emotion from seeing a difference in GDP values, now can it).

However, I am arguing that meta-awareness in the classes of books being read – fiction or non-fiction – will impose upon a mindset that affects the understanding of the subject being read. Simply put, we treat fictions and non-fictions differently. Continue reading Two Ways of Reading

1. I’m also lyric deaf but I doubt if anyone will get the reference, in which, I have just wasted your time reading it [↩]