Around two years ago , as an aftermath of an " illuminating" discussion with friends , I was converted from a book - reader to a non-fiction reader. And strangely this had not really been brought to my notice until today at the coffee- table at office , again with a bunch of friends . It was around 6 pm and in that fateful moment , absolutely out- of- the- blue, I declared that only non-fiction was ever worth reading ! And from there on was set the battlefield , the war-horns were blown , the skies had become cloudy and I paused for a few moments and realized I was not getting out of this one alive !
So the first rebuttal came "hahaha...then that means that of course you have never had the good luck of reading the Harry Potter books. "
I -"truth is stranger than fiction. That means whatever we can possibly learn from reading people's real life stories can never be learnt from fiction like Harry Potter."
Friend-"Okay first of all Harry Potter is not fiction , it is " fantasy" ...duu..uhh ! And secondly you cannot always read with the soul purpose of learning , people read for entertainment also."
I -"So there you go , you do admit that fiction can never offer the kind of learning offered by real life accounts. Then well for someone like say Elon Musk , who is too busy for entertainment , the only option would be to read non-fiction , right ! So if we were to say that if one day we had to choose one out of saving all the fictional works ever written and the non-fictional ones , then the obvious choice would be to save non-fiction. Because books like biographies of Abraham Lincoln , Steve Jobs , APJ Abdul Kalam can inspire people to move mountains.......!
Friend-"Consider this . A Steve Jobs book would tell about how his circumstances were , then how hard he worked and how he got out of a really bad situation. But it will never be able to make you feel exactly the pain he felt at that miserable time. There comes fiction . Even if the bad situation is false , the writer of fiction only put it there because he wanted to make you feel the misery of the hero. Fiction is much closer to poetry in that regard. It can move you to feel emotions you never knew existed inside of you . It can transport you to worlds you will never be able see in your whole life. And talk about learning . do not compare a Steve Jobs biography to only one fiction novel . Better compare the sum of all the fiction out in the world to the sum of all the non-fiction out there. The wisdom of non-fiction would win . Because maybe a single work of fiction by itself is narrow but then there are too many non-fiction books out there."
I - "Okay ....but i like reading a story that was once lived by someone better than reading a story that was just cooked up......and also i have got a lot of work .....so see you tomorrow ....."
