Monday, October 16, 2023

All the Facts about Fiction

You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, what is your favorite book?
-- AJ Fikery, in The Storied Life of AJ Fickery 

I just spent a couple of harrowing weeks in Venezuela. I was shadowing two military criminal investigators searching for an ex-Delta Force captain who was doing his best to stay hidden. Before that I cooked with a chemist. And over the last year I’ve traveled through time, been invisible, defied death, and marched with a female Russian sniper. I’ve exchanged backhands with an aging tennis star trying to regain her past glory. I’ve visited midnight libraries and circuses. 

Pretty exciting stuff for a 50-something third-grade teacher. I spend the day encouraging readers, and I also spend most nights embarked upon grand adventures. The kind you only find in books. The kind only a lover of books can take. 

Being a book lover grants me membership in a secret society. We don’t have a special handshake or organized meetings. But when we meet an instant convention ensues. The agenda is the same and features one simple question: “Have you read anything good lately?” 

We are the fans of fiction. 

We talk about books, we suggest books, and we occasionally buy each other books. Many of my teaching colleagues are members. Beautiful Karla is in the club, as are several of the wives of my best friends. Sadly, my dad and I are the only men in the club. The data out there says that women read more books than men do, and when it comes to fiction, women again are more bookish. Studies also reveal that men resist reading books by female authors. What a shame! My inner Harper Lee is weeping. 

Men may have closed the book on fiction by choosing to live in a strictly non-fiction world. And I agree, the non-fiction aisles of the bookstore are great places to visit. Give me some history, a biography, a sports story, or a Christian living soul-shaper and I’m all in. But it’s fiction that really pulses through the pages of my heart. Ninety percent of what I read is fiction. And we readers, fiction or non, are a dying breed. 

That’s because a third of teens aren’t reading for fun anymore. According to a recent survey, 31 percent of 13-year-olds said they never read for pleasure, 22 percent read once or twice a week, and only 14 percent read for fun every day. The stats are a complete flip from 40 years ago when only eight percent didn’t read for enjoyment. It doesn’t take a genius to see the negative effects of smart phones and social media when it comes to reading. Just check the grade books. Math and reading scores on the nation’s report card have fallen to their lowest levels in decades, even lower than 2020’s pandemic scores. The good news is that kids who read in their spare time scored higher on average. 

There are several other benefits to cracking open some fiction. According to psychologists, reading fiction improves your theory of mind. Basically, theory of mind is when you use a host of input to figure out what another person is feeling or thinking based on what they’re not telling you. It’s reading people, like when you look past a used-car salesman’s smile to see his sack of lies. And by reading fiction you’re not only activating the part of your brain responsible for theory of mind, but you’re strengthening it too. Secondly, reading fiction makes you more empathetic. And lastly, reading fiction increases creativity. 

Reading fiction must be the reason for my heightened creative, empathetic people-reading skills, but personally I enjoy fiction because I love marveling at what someone has accomplished. We all love to experience uber-talented people doing what they do best. It’s why we love the Olympics, concerts, sports, and movies. People making really hard things look easy leaves us in awe and often left wondering how did they do that? And since we’re not gymnasts, musicians, quarterbacks, or actors our level of marveling is heightened from our lack of experience in those disciplines. 

For me, it’s the same with authors. I can’t soar through the air like Simone Biles, but writing is a little closer to my wheelhouse. I often describe creating these blogs as putting a puzzle together in which I also have to create the individual puzzle pieces. Two pages and 900 words is doable. But 400 pages and 90,000 words? That’s a lot of puzzle pieces. And when an author combines world-class writing with an original, creative story, I’m in awe. They’re the ones who cause me to read a sentence that’s so good I have to close the book and stare at the wall. They’re the authors who move me to highlight sentences or entire paragraphs. 

They’re the creators of page-turners. The books for which I forsake all other obligations because I can’t put them down. The books that live on after I’m finished, that leave me a little sad that I’m done. They’re the ones that I’ll recommend to others. 

October is National Book Month. So, get out there and grab a book. Go on a new adventure. Re-read an old favorite. Visit the local library, support an indie bookstore, or download an audiobook for the commute. 

And let me know what your favorite book is. My secret society is always accepting new members.







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