I've been reading a lot less fiction lately as well. I used to try to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, just to get some balance.Light Leak wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 7:24 pmI haven't read fiction in awhile. When I read lately it's mostly health books. I still want to read fiction if I can find the time, but lately I've been trying to figure out how to fix myself since doctors can't seem to figure me out.
Thing is, to me good fiction is a long-winded way of illuminating or looking at life in different ways that is entertaining and informative about the human experience. But most of my recent fiction reads miss the mark. What stories, what myths (which are just stories with a long shelf life) actually inform me about the human experience? The modern stuff seems banal and the old stuff out of date. I know I'm painting with a broad brush here, but what I'm after is grokking life. Hell, I think that's what everyone is after -- it's part of our firmware.
Decent non-fiction can always add incrementally to the grok, the more factual the better -- please minimize opinions or at least state them openly as such. I finished Rachel Maddow's book on the oil industry and learn a some tidbits relevant to understanding the war in Ukraine. I read Daniel Dennet and learn a decent theory of the evolution of culture, the mind and so forth. I read a fiction book and get a retread of myth or trope overlain on somebody's fantasy. I think the Life of Pi was the last fiction book that made me think.
I heard an author's interview back in 2020. The guy had released a fictional work about a world pandemic right before Covid. But he admitted he could never imagine people would behave as they behaved in the pandemic, inventing conspiracy theories, making it political and so forth. His version of a terrible pandemic had everyone pulling together to fight the pathogen. The reality was everyone using the pathogen to stake out and solidify their position in their tribe of choice.
We need some new myths, and I'd like to read them.
Note: I read the Old Man and the Sea last year. It was a strong statement of individual struggle, but I wondered why he kept killing the sharks after it was obviously futile.