Fiction or Non-Fiction

I’ve decided to do an edition of “Or What?” that deals with what we read. I’ve noticed differences in the way I handle fiction and non-fiction works and that has led me here to ask about reading patterns.

When I crack open a novel I find that I can burn through it in a matter of days even with work and writing and whatever else I’m doing. Some go faster than others; I blasted through Card’s Empire in no time flat, but I’m slogging my way through Madame Bovary after months. I didn’t enjoy Empire, so my reading pleasure isn’t a factor; I suppose it could be the translation factor on a two-hundred year old text. I had the same problem with War and Peace so it is quite possible. However, those are exceptions. Most fiction flies by for me whether I would wish it or not.

Non-fiction is another story. I tend to read a lot of it because being a historian is on my list of aspirations. I’m currently reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Still reading it. It is a monster of a book dwarfing Robert Jordan-sized novels and sporting that tiny text publishers seem to cherish for non-fiction. I think I am a third of the way through it. It is a revelation as to how fast a constitutionally protected nation can in the space of a decade become a dictatorship and police state by the will of a determined person who has cultivated the loyalty of the right thugs. That is all beside the point, though. I read a lot of history and a lot of geography works, along with whatever subject I find I am lacking but need for my stories. It always takes so long to get through, even if it is worth it in the end.

There isn’t much that I don’t read; if I have one area that gets ignored it is contemporary standard fiction. I usually don’t pick up contemporary fantasy or sci-fi either. I don’t have patience to wait years for the next installment only to have the author keel over before completing the series; I’m thinking of Robert Jordan and George RR Martin here. Only Jordan is dead, but everything else applies to Martin. By the time his next volume is done I will have to reread the series to remember what is going on and I’m not sure I’m emotionally up for that. I would have been better off waiting until he finished or died, but it’s too late for that. I tend to lean towards British Lit from the Romantic and Victorian periods. Some of my favorites are pre-WWII American works like All the King’s Men and anything by Willa Cather.

So what kind of things do you read? Is it strictly fiction? Specific genres of fiction? Do you have noticeable patterns when you switch types or genres?

Write On,
R.