FICTION or NON-FICTION?

[rapa]

Barb shared this today.  Most fascinating article! For those of us fiction lovers it validates us!!

BTW, my DH reads only non-fiction. 

                                          

This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain On Fiction.

upworthy.com

[Ursula]

I will never think of reading fiction as a guilty pleasure ever again.  Thanks to both of you for sharing this.  I will be sharing it with a certain friend who never has time for fiction.

[Ioruach]

I recently read an article on this same issue.  Unfortunately, I don’t remember where or what organization did the study that prompted the article. I don’t think I needed it---I have always been comfortable with my frequent reading of fiction---but it was gratifying to see, nevertheless.  I suppose there could be some debate over just what constitutes “pop” fiction, versus “literary” fiction. Would, for example, most of the novels recommended here on Bookoholics be considered “pop” fiction?  How does one define “literary” fiction, anyway? What do others here think?


[Mandy Muffin]

Interesting! I just finished "Fall From Grace" by Richard North Patterson, placed on Marta's Vineyard MA.  Patterson, a noted novelist who has produced many award winning books, lives on the island and brings the reader into the local culture, as  you choose sides on a murder investigation and estate dispute. When finished, you want to visit the island and live among the townspeople.  Maybe you can run into Pres. Obama there sometimes.  I did come close to experimenting this culture, as I spent a week living in an art colony on Nantucket, the sister island.  The point being that reading a novel about someplace is a lot more stimulating to the brain than a travel guide. 

As far as visiting dystopian worlds, as the commentary suggests, this is the ultimate use of fiction to create an artificial reality.  We have come a long way since "Gulliver's Travels."  After such recent reads as "The Hunger Games" and "Ender's Game," I am about to complete the last two books in the series of "Divergent" by Veronica Roth. Accordingly, "Insurgent" and "Allegiant" are my next two reads. I have to get in ahead of the movies, the first being released next month.  These reads should really set my brain abuzz as I see Chicago in entirely new light.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/01/09/book-buzz/4393105/

[Carci]

Very interesting...  I saw this posted on Barb's FB page but didn't realize there was a video attached.  I know that personally I gain much more info that I retain from a good fiction than from a news article.

I was never interested in WWII but after reading a series of novels about people from many different areas of the world who lived in that period of time I was fascinated how each novel looked at the war from a different viewpoint.  Right now I am reading Skeletons At The Feast by Chris Bohjalian about a small group of diverse people in 1945, in the waning months of WWII, attempting to cross the remnants of the Third Reich from Warsaw to the Rhine to reach the British and American lines. I will go to an atlas to check the area they are traveling just as I checked early maps of Italy and researched ancient aqueducts while reading Pompeii by Robert Harris last month.  Fiction spurs an interest in reality.

As a child I hated history... now I love it... thanks to fiction!

[Ioruach]

Carci, since you mention WWII novels I might mention what I consider an excellent series that I have been reading by David Downing.  It is what is referred to as the John Russell series, which spans the period from the 1930s through 1948.  The six books in the series are given titles that use the names of train stations in Berlin. These include Zoo Station, Lehrter Station and the final book in the series, Masaryk Station, which I am now reading. 

John Russell is a journalist based in Berlin who is also a double agent with connections to the major players on the scene, including the British, the Russians, the Americans and of course the Germans.  The author, David Downing, has also written rather extensively on non-fiction issues covering the same period, thus his fiction is (at least seems to me to be) historically accurate.

I have some problems keeping track of the characters mostly, I think, because of all those Russian and Eastern European names that I can never hope to correctly pronounce. The books may also be a bit difficult to come by. My library system only has the three that I listed above.   And finally these books will give you ample opportunity to go to your atlas to check on cities and other places that Russell goes to in his travels, and they are many. Very educational fiction.


[Carci]

lorouch, I checked them out at fantastic fiction and then went to my library website and all of them are available...  Yea!!!

Alas, I have 8 books currently checked out and have frozen my request for another 3 so it may be a month or so before I get to this series but it sounds like my kind of book... I read several synopsis on ff and I like what I read...  DH also likes this type of book so it is a double hit... will definitely give it a try.

Thanks so much for the recommendation   :)