Occasionally I come across a person who does not read fiction. To each his/her own, right? Even more occasionally, though, I come across a person who does not read fiction and does not see the value in reading fiction. (Yes, it's difficult not to punch such people in the face.)
I have roughly 1 million reasons to prove to fiction haters why it's not only a great way to spend your time but important (putting aside my belief that nobody needs to defend what he or she chooses to read). One of those reasons is that just because a text isn't expository or informational doesn't mean it doesn't teach the reader something. And I don't just mean in an emotional/psychological/empathetic sense. I mean facts.
For example, I'm reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society right now, which is charming and fantastic and also an epistolary novel, which I love. It's set immediately post-WWII in the Channel Islands, specifically Guernsey (duh, I guess--that's in the title). Here's my confession: I wasn't really aware of the Channel Islands before reading this. I knew of Guernsey and Jersey, because I am from Wisconsin and two types of cows are named after them.* I knew that they were places, but I always thought they shared a land mass with England. Wrong. They are actually an archipelago in the English Channel. I also had no idea that they were occupied by the Germans during WWII.
*In fourth grade, I believe, you have to memorize all the types of dairy cows: Holstein, Brown Swiss, Jersey, Guernsey, Ayrshire, and the Milking Shorthorn. That was true even if you lived in a city and had never been near a cow, like me.
Would I ever have acquired an interest in the Channel Islands without reading this book? Probably not. I'm not much of a Brit-ophile, and I tend to like my islands tropical. But reading this book has made me extremely interested in Guernsey. I've spend time over the past week indulging the interest I've developed through reading this novel. That is one of the great benefits of reading fiction--it introduces us to ideas, people, and places we wouldn't have known we were interested in otherwise.
What topics have you become fascinated by, thanks to fiction?
9 comments:
Change the cow-naming requirement to Civil War battles/generals and there's Virginia schooling :)
I am constantly looking up things I read in fiction, wondering, "Is that real? Where's that at? Who is that?"
The Hellboy comics/movies gave me such a fascination with Rasputin that I read a giant biography on him.
And after we read The Scorpio Races for book club, I did some Internet searches about horse legends.
I LOVE when fiction introduces me to new stuff!
This is one of those books that I keep saying I should read. I'm fascinated by the Channel Islands too. There's a BBC (?) miniseries called Island At War that I watched not long ago, which is a fictional account of how the Channel Islands were occupied during WWII. Very interesting. I've known about the Channel Islands as long as I've known about Henry Cavill (super hot actor :)) who is from Jersey.
It's great when fiction piques your interest and opens doors to things you didn't know about. :)
I loved that book! Part of what fascinates me about Britain during the two World Wars is that they were much more involved than the US ever was. We get the history of these wars, and we have relatives who may have fought in them, but we weren't in the thick of it like Britain was.
And I totally read up on the battle at Culloden after reading Outlander (though I never got very far in that series).
Weirdly, I'm going through a nonfiction phase right now, but that doesn't mean I'm suddenly being introduced to new ideas in a way that I wasn't while I stuck to fiction. Like Mandarin reminded me that I wanted to read some books on geology with the MC's rock collection.
I love learning from fiction too!
My dad and I used to get into this arguement (fiction vs. nonfiction). I'd always tell him "It's all fiction" because even nonfiction authors pick the facts that go along with that author's perspective/beliefs/cultural upbringing, thereby skewing the overall picture in some ways.
Also, aside from facts in fiction, I see fiction as an exploration of the ulimate truthes about ourselves through lies.
Great points. I also happened upon this article, which fits nicely with this topic: Your Brain On Fiction http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=1&hp
Neuroscience shows some really cool things about how the brain reacts to reading fiction. Basically, fiction stimulates much more than the language-processing region of the brain, suggesting that reading really is a virtual reality experience and a strong educational/training force.
Sounds interesting!
I've found that fiction has gotten me interested in different historical events. Like World War II, for example. For the most part, I'd much rather learn about a particular time period through a fictional story that's based on true facts, than by reading a non-fiction book.
Can I punch that person in the face? (and in other places). Really. There is so much you can learn about LIFE from reading fiction. Grrr. Let me at 'em.
I loved this book, and I was also ignorant about the islands and what hapenned to them in the war. What a great book. As for the fictions haters... What can you do? At the hg movie this weekend a friend sat next to a guy who boasted this was only the second book he'd ever read. um. It's too depressing. I only hope these folks can still be changed. Too optimistic? maybe.
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