Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction?

[annaisabella]

I would definitely say that i prefer fiction, although after 2 or 3 fiction books i always try to read a non-fiction to broaden my knowledge. At the moment i'm reading "A short history of nearly everything" by Bryson and i find it quite interesting and revelaing.

[jales4]

I am always reading at least one fiction and one non-fiction at any given time. Sometimes I try to have them correlate, but sometimes not.

It is only in the past few years that I have started reading more than one book at at time. Now I also read a fiction, a non-fiction, and often a book of short stories or really light reading all at the same time.

The non-fiction I tend to wait until I'm home alone, and have an hour without interuption.

The fiction I read just to relax, in the evenings.

The short story or really light reading, I carry with me when I'm likely to have a short wait, or read while cooking dinner, etc.

Jan.

[farmgirlshelley]

If I was forced to choose I would say fiction, but I really love both.

[PAULA717]

Love both.

[Interbane]

Much of the time even non-fiction is fictitious. At least fiction doesn't pretend. But that's a hopeless answer, at least we try, right?

[farmgirlshelley]

On the news I recently heard that some of Oprah's book club books were non-fiction, more like autobiographies, and they found out people were actually LYING about things that they wrote about!!! so I guess you are right

[DWill]

I'm a little ashamed to admit it--must be the indoctrination of an English major--but if the question is decided by the numbers of books I read of each category, I prefer nonfiction. It seems that in the past few decades, nonfiction has developed in interesting ways that fiction can't match. I can become more absorbed, actually, in the treatments authors of nonfiction give their subjects than I usually can in fictional narratives. I do feel I'm neglecting fiction, though, and I think it has a value for people, spiritually, that it would be sad to lose.

[GentleReader9]

I go through phases. On a given trip to the library I might take out all fiction books or all non-fiction books or a mixture of both. In recent months I have bought more non-fiction books than fiction books, but I've read more fiction books than non-fiction books. This isn't because I don't read the books I buy. It's because I can read a fiction book faster than I read a non-fiction book with the same number of pages. I process them differently. I guess I like both and I can't really quantify how much I like each.

By the way, not everything is either one or the other. What about poetry, or ancient epic, what about journaling or a memoir-novel like "The Things They Carried?" While it may be true, as is said above, that a lot of non-fiction like history and biography or autobiography contains some fiction, some non-fiction is non-fiction and has really little or no element of fiction in it. A book I have on decorative stone simply explains how each kind of stone comes into material being, geologically, where it has been quarried, how it is used and what properties make it useful, what circumstances make it available. I would say that it is non-fiction and that when anything that might be fiction is included (folklore or stories related to stones) the text is pretty clear about that status. It is an example of one kind of non-fiction I really like.

[Interbane]

GR: "A book I have on decorative stone simply explains how each kind of stone comes into material being, geologically, where it has been quarried, how it is used and what properties make it useful, what circumstances make it available."

Does it tell you how to find diamonds if you want, or maybe how to sift gold from a riverbed? I'd love to disappear for a few years and be a hillbilly, living off river gold.

Explanatory non-fiction like that may even have false information. It's the nature of reality, it's hard to achieve the ideal in regards to truth, knowledge, non-fiction, information, etc. Some little nugget of untruth usually manages to weasel it's way into everything. Like sex on the beach.

[GentleReader9]

I think you mean, "like sand when you're having sex on the beach." (It's just too much fun to nitpick back when you nitpick at me, Interbane).

No, the book doesn't tell you how to go get your own stones out of nature, although I do have some other books about that. This one tells more about names for different types of granites and marbles and other stones used decoratively, with the history of when and where that type has been quaried and used.

Of course it is nothing like exhaustive, but since it's a sourcebook for decorators and designers, it contains a lot of really cool photographs of the insides of all kinds of buildings and tells the names of marbles in mosaics in the floors of palaces and cathedrals, and where the lapis in a famous piece of stone carving was from, and whether those quarries are still active and things like that.

I enjoy it the way I enjoy fiction, because I'm not in the market for most of the stuff in the book, but it's mostly just information, even if it isn't exhaustive or might contain a few errors.