Post: #1

Hey guys!
So at the age of 23 I've decided that reading fiction is a waste of time and I'm actually surprised I spent so many years of my life reading it. But I'm not sure if I'm ruling out a lot of great titles that may be beneficial for me in my early 20's.
Is there a benefit to reading fiction these days?

Post: #2

I think it depends on the fiction. What is the underlying moral or lesson? The Count of Monte Christo is fiction but it i still a tale of how negative desires can consume and ruin a man. Lately I have been reading some historical fiction about the rise and fall of Genghis Khan or the battle of Thermopylae. I wouldn't just write of the whole of fiction as junk. Strike a balance between the two. Reading biographies about great meant throughout history can be beneficial as well.

Post: #3

What kind of fiction do you read? Crime, science-fiction, fantasy? You probably just read the wrong books.

There is no reason at all to trade one for the other.

I read equal amounts of fiction and non-fiction books. Both have a distinct value to them. While you can gain more real-life and applicable knowledge from non-fiction, novels can help you to expand your vocabulary and your imagination as well as to see basic structures and motifs that drive human relationships and that have not changed over time. Read Cicero, Shakespeare, Jack London, Evelyn Waugh, William Faulkner or Don DeLillo, and you will realize how similar the basic conflicts are that have plagued us ever since the beginning of our species.

Also, good novels from past times make the historical period during which they were written palpable. For instance, it's worthwhile to learn about the history of The Great War through textbooks, but if you really want to learn about how people perceived those days, you should read memoirs or novels like "All Quiet on the Western Front" (Remarque) or "A Farewell to Arms" (Hemingway).

Literature conveys insights into human nature that non-fiction cannot necessarily. Do you yourself a favor and grab a classic every once in a while. Over time you will realize that it adds something very valuable to your overall education like traveling, working, game, good conversations as well as doing sports does.

Post: #4

Post College.

Non-Fiction helped me make money.
Fiction was for recreation.

Now that I'm older, good fiction can help you make money because good fiction incorporates a lot of life lessons.

WIA

Post: #5

I can relate OP. I stopped reading fiction after my 12th grade Lit class.

But don't discount all fiction, I have a soft spot for dystopian works. Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Atlas Shrugged, Brave New World, etc.

I never understood why books like the Maze Runner and Hunger Games were popular. Teen easy reading bunk if you ask me.

Post: #6

My profession forces me to read non fiction extensively. My first love is fiction and it allows my mind to roam. It's like watching tv except it's written form. As Archie said, a lot of life lessons are woven into good fictional books.

Post: #7

It's foolish to discount fiction as though it is beneath you. I've been that guy just like I've been that guy who thought he was above banging 7s. Eventually I wised up in both cases.

I don't think a man should ever lose his taste for good fiction. Most great works of fiction are rooted in reality, contain life lessons, and an interesting look into the past. The point about human nature is also very true, especially when you read fiction and immediately connect characters to real people in your life.

I think fiction also teaches you to be more insightful in your interpretations of the world around you, which is a quality that will make you a more interesting person that people are attracted to. People are drawn to insight like moths to a flame. When you can connect things and make light of situations that others cannot you start to have that most interesting man in the world aura to you.

Fiction is also about as close as you can get to time travel. You can read Hemingway to see how people felt during the great war, Chandler to see how people felt in 1930s Los Angeles, and so on.

After a while you gather that the same problems that we face were felt by all the generations before us in one way or another.

Post: #8

I gave up on fiction when I was 20. The only fiction book I really liked was Animal Farm which is more of a parable. I feel it was divinely inspired. Most fiction is forgettable. The crime books, the romance and the thrillers are like bubble gum to me.

Post: #9

I think a good starting point for someone who might like to read fiction but is apprehensive about picking up a huge novel should try a collection of Joseph Conrad's short stories. Every one a masterpiece, and insight into human nature that transcends the 100+ years since they were written.

Post: #10

I started to move away from fiction in high school; I still appreciated literature classes but my interest in history, mythology and philosophy simply eclipsed it over time. At this point I have no real plans to read fiction in the immediate future, although I'd like to eventually, because a man can't count himself as truly learned if he lacks a strong familiarity with the great works of fiction of his language. Still, my rather sizable and ever-growing stack of non-fiction books beckons, so for the moment fiction shall have to wait.

If or when I get to it, I'd like to start with a good base of Shakespeare: Hamlet, Julius Caesar, The Tempest and then reread Macbeth. Then I'd hope to get to Ulysses by James Joyce or Moby Dick by Melville...I've heard nothing but the highest praise about both, although I'm sure they'll test my literary endurance to the breaking point. Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man could also be a good start, and Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray seems very intriguing as well. I could also be tempted to begin with something lighter and easier like Austen's novels, although I remain skeptical as to whether her seemingly quaint love stories are on the same level as works of more philosophical substance and weight...maybe a more well-read member than myself could comment on that.

Post: #11

A good shortcut is to simply not read any modern fiction, most of which is either pulp trash or the rambling of a diseased liberal mind. The classics are considered classic for a reason. Stick with the classic works of fiction and non-fiction, and then only read the modern non-fiction which has specific, practical appeal to you (i.e. technical subjects, work-related, money-making/business, health, etc...). To be frank, all the important questions about life were answered a long time ago. You will find them in the classics. You aren't going to learn anything useful about life (that is, how to live) from modern works. The vast majority of modern books are just garbage published with the goal of making money. This is not a new phenomenon, either. Schopenhauer had some useful advice about reading:

Quote:Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of not reading is highly important. This consists in not taking a book into one’s hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time — such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

Post: #12

In my thirties.

Still like to read a little high quality fiction now and again, but it's not as interesting as learning something.

Post: #13

When I was younger I gave up on fiction as I thought I don´t have time for that. Now I am older and out of the hamster wheel I see that I should probably have read more fiction when I was younger.

There are two main reasons why fiction has it´s merits for me. First of all it´s the easiest way to practice your imagination. It´s like jogging it´s a basic and necessary skill.

Another reason is you learn stuff slow without pressure. You can enjoy learning. Story telling was always the natural way of learning. Learning with non fiction is necessary but can be to much and produce mental overload.

Additionally non fiction has no soul. Fiction let´s us connect with the human part of ourselfs.

Post: #14

Here's a post I wrote in a thread where other members were going on about how they "hate" fiction. It's an old one, but a lot of guys said they got value from it so just going to drop it here:

(10-25-2013 09:37 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  It's a mistake to filter every aspect of life through the lens of rational motives - i.e., how much direct value do I get out of this as opposed to this, etc.

There's more to life than complete rationality and efficiency, and men who miss that subject themselves to a psychological handicap, in my honest opinion. What about doing something because it's enjoyable? Don't get me wrong, if you don't enjoy fiction you don't enjoy it, but the guys wearing a lack of fiction-reading as a badge of pride, or even looking down on other men and comparing them to women for their taste in fiction, may be inflating their own personal values just a tad.

There's nothing wrong with having free time in life and using that free time to do stuff out of pure enjoyment. Plenty of things we do for enjoyment have less intellectual and emotional benefit than fiction. Watching sports. TV. Having a drink with friends. Eating food because it tastes good rather than just because it is our fuel. Watching a sunrise. Not to mention that each of these has its more subtle rewards; not everything needs a direct and quantifiable benefit.

And what about escape? I try to restrict my fiction reading to just before bedtime. I work in the day and also put my energy into a lot of other rational pursuits that are meant to further my career or improve me in some manner. But I think focusing my energy in these directions every waking moment becomes too much (I sometimes wonder if I overdo it).

You've got to give yourself a break sometimes.

Fiction is relaxing and helps me to wind down. It gives me a chance to escape the demands of my own life for a moment, to get lost in another world. A half hour to an hour before bed-time is usually what I put in; I sleep better and feel like my imagination is the better for it.

It has done wonders for my insomnia.

Even further, I take issue with the idea that fiction serves no place in the field of learning. For one thing, a lot of fiction deals with philisophical issues - the author just uses it as a way to convey their views by tapping into emotion. Fiction allows someone to show how they think a person should apply their morals to real life situations, bringing the lesson alive rather than just explaining it. Making the lesson more emotional and complex.

On a deeper level, some experts believe fiction is an emotional release and that we need it more now than ever due to the high levels of stress in our lives. Read "Million-dollar Outlines" (a non-fiction book lol) for a breakdown of this concept about how stories fit into society.

Like watching movies, the brain follows patterns in fiction much the same way it does in movies. In other words, when you're watching a movie and the character is going through a high-stress situation, your brain doesn't react as if it's observing that situation, it reacts as if it's actually going through that situation. As if you are the character. The same is true with books.

The author of "Million-dollar Outlines" suggest it's possible we use these stories not just as tools to teach each other but as a way to condition and strengthen our brains for dangerous or taxing situations without putting ourselves in actually dangerous situations. You'll notice that many stories are about a character going through a train of challenges that most of us would never in a million years want to go through in life, especially in some of the more stressful forms of fiction, like thrillers or horror. Sometimes we torture our characters.

So why in the world would we subject ourselves to that if our brain doesn't know the difference enough to categorize these as made-up stories? Possibly because it's like strengthening a muscle. You train it in the gym and it then becomes more prepared to cope with the lesser challenges faced in an everyday life. You develop a stronger base to work with and your job and family doesn't make you want to have a nervous breakdown or pick up a gun and blow your brains out.

An emotional rollercoaster ride without risk is like a training program for your mind.

Before you scoff at this notion of "training" with something that is "made up," don't forget about sports and working out your physical body with artificial exercises. What are these "games" we play with these artificial rules but challenges that we make up with the end result being to keep ourselves in shape? Are they not just as silly?

If something must have a direct real-life purpose in order to be worthy, you might as well only work out with real-life activities, like chopping firewood and climbing big rocks. That could make for a great work-out program, to be sure, but throwing out all forms of exercise or sport on this basis would be ludicrous. These other forms of exercise give us a way to make it more fun and interesting, and to keep it in our lives even when there are not many rounds of madrone or climbable rocks lying around in our environment.

What about creativity? Has the manosphere become so love-stricken with rhetoric that it has forgotten the value of the creative brain? As Napoleon Hill would have said, everything great produced by man begins as an idea. Imagining what does not exist is one of the most powerful capabilities your mind possesses.

While reading non-fiction introduces great new ideas, there are perhaps better ways of developing your imaginative faculties. Fiction is one of them.

Along these lines, reading is much more of a creative exercise than watching a movie - the two are hardly comparable. One is passive and one is more active. Because you only get part of the story in the words on a page. You still have to create the image in your brain on your own, and you do so without even being prompted to. It's automatic.

You also fill in a lot of the blanks, as often an author only suggests things and you create the rest - talk to different readers, asking them to describe characters and scenes, and they'll often all describe something different. On another level, fiction promotes creativity because it accustoms your brain to believing in things that do not at the moment exist.

Someone mentioned that movies create a more emotional response for them than books. Only someone who doesn't read much fiction would say this. A book is something you spend hours with - days. In some cases even weeks. It's much more rich and in depth, and you become much more attached to the characters - how can you replicate that with a movie that doesn't even last two hours and does everything for you?

Many books I've read have stuck with me for weeks, leaving me in a state of shock or melancholy or inspiration. With some of them, that feeling returns every time I think back on the story. Sometimes, as melodramatic as it sounds, you feel like you've suffered a personal loss due to it affecting you so deeply or simply because the author had the audacity to end the story.

I'll admit there have been a couple movies that have given me this strong emotional response, but they are few and far between and the feeling is usually far more subtle; it's more likely my emotional response will be how it didn't even come close to adding up to the book, a complaint given by readers so often it's become cliche.

Finally, as others pointed out above, it's horribly dismissive to put reading off as pointless because it's imaginary. Regardless of all the flaws with putting off imaginary exercises as pointless, there are many other things that are imagined, like watching movies or listening to songs, that you guys probably take part in (hell, I'd venture that a great deal of non-fiction includes quite a bit of imaginary stuff lol). Thus this is hypocritical at best.

But the difference with reading fiction is that you're getting lost in something that's not real while at the same time exercising your brain and improving your reading ability. It's a much more engaged form of entertainment than many others - how could that not be a good thing?

I empathize with the perspective of non-readers. I've gone through my non-fiction-only phases, but I think it misses the mark by a long shot, and I've come back. Both have their place and a non-fiction reader is not somehow more balanced for not having a taste in fiction - in fact, I'd suggest that an imbalance existing in their mental strengths is much more likely.

Don't read fiction if it simply doesn't speak to you, but there's no reason to act high and mighty about it. Chance are you might be missing the point; that doesn't mean the point isn't there.

Original Thread: /thread-29268.html

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #15

I think the healthy reading mind needs variety: non-fiction, fiction, and a bit of poetry here and there.

Too much of one thing dulls the senses.

Post: #16

By the way, those of you talking about this "bubble gum fiction," you're clearly reading the wrong stuff. You don't read trash nonfiction, so don't read trash fiction; let's keep this apples to apples.

Try some Cormac McCarthy (same guy who wrote "No Country for Old Men."). I've read two books of his and both haunt me to this day. The man is a true master at his craft.

If you're willing to challenge your assumptions the two books are "The Road" and "Blood Meridian."

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #17

(01-24-2016 07:16 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  By the way, those of you talking about this "bubble gum fiction," you're clearly reading the wrong stuff. You don't read trash nonfiction, so don't read trash fiction; let's keep this apples to apples.

Try some Cormac McCarthy (same guy who wrote "No Country for Old Men."). I've read two books of his and both haunt me to this day. The man is a true master at his craft.

If you're willing to challenge your assumptions the two books are "The Road" and "Blood Meridian."

Can Non Fiction possibly be trash?

Post: #18

^ Is that a serious question? Have you visited Amazon recently? There's plenty of shitty, even inaccurate, nonfiction out there. Through traditional publishing houses as well, for that matter.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #19

(01-24-2016 07:47 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  ^ Is that a serious question? Have you visited Amazon recently? There's plenty of shitty, even inaccurate, nonfiction out there. Through traditional publishing houses as well, for that matter.

If it's inaccurate, then it's fiction to me. But I think I see what you are saying, I automatically throw out rubbish from my mental compartments if it's inaccurate. I do see what you are saying though in regards to poorly written fiction.

Post: #20

^ Sure, you can say that, but most people don't know when they're reading something inaccurate - it's still categorized as nonfiction. Much of what we think we know will someday be shown inaccurate or incomplete; even worse, many of today's nonfiction books are riddled with fallacies; inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete data; and skewed perspectives.

In fact, the older I get the more I understand how little in books can be trusted (perhaps even moreso than others since I write for a living). I mentioned this in the post above when I said much of nonfiction is largely imaginary.

Anyhow, I still love nonfiction, though, and this is all a tangent; it's certainly better to keep educating yourself.

Yes, in the context that I was using the word "trash," I was just referring to quality. As you said poorly written, and I'll add "lacking of substance." Or written for a mindless audience.

There are a ton of poorly written nonfiction books out there too, so let's make sure we're not comparing "48 Laws of Power" (which I've read is riddled with many of its own historical inaccuracies, ironically) to "bubble gum fiction" and calling it a fair comparison - that's all I was saying.

I think guys who brush off fiction ought to try a glass of the good stuff before committing to that idea.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #21

Never, I wouldn't call a Dostoevsky novel a 'waste of time' simply because it's fiction.

But maybe you mean fiction meant purely for entertainment.

Post: #22

I wouldn't trade in fiction for anything. Fiction is the blueprint for superb storytelling. You should be underlining awesome phrases and ideas and trying to use them when you tell stories to people: your family, your boss, your friends and random bar sluts.

You can never be too good at telling stories.

I try to read more non-fiction, but I always try to spend a few hours a week reading some good fiction. It keeps me creative and intrigued.

Post: #23

Example of trash non fiction. Dianetics by Hubbard. I couldnt finish the book.

Post: #24

Aside from deriving some enjoyment from reading the early Harry Potter books in middle and high school, I was never really into fiction. Aside from building your imagination, I think it's silly. Maybe I don't appreciate it in the way it's meant to be appreciated, but I've always found scientific articles and biographies of great people to be much more stimulating, as you can actually relate these sources to your life in meaningful ways.

I guess what I appreciate most about fiction is the symbolism. It's nice to think on multiple levels.

Post: #25

Growing up in public school, I learned to read by reading fiction & the only books I was ever assigned were fiction. The only time I read growing up was when I was assigned a book, obviously fiction. I hated reading and thought it was a waste of time. After attending college for a year and taking a semester off, I began to think about career paths and picked up John Ashcroft's Never Again - 9/11 told from the perspective of the Attorney General. I was fascinated by how exciting and interesting these actual events were and how much I was able to learn from it. I began picking up any nonfiction I could find, starting with biographies & histories, then moving into philosophy and religion and science. I've been a voracious reader ever since. I still dip into fiction every once in a while for the classics, but I make sure I'm always reading some great man's biography and other nonfiction from which to learn.