So i just finished work at 11 o'clock and it is presently almost 12. I mention the time simply because that is why this post shall be both short and might not make as much sense.
Ok so in order to totally understand this post i am gonna need to tell a story from back in the day.
Back when i entered into grade 11, well entered isn't really right. Back when i was in high school in semester 2 some guy (or girl) decided to donate books to the school library. This seemed like a great idea to me because the school was new so we didn't really have any books.
For some stupid reason which i never understood (and probably never tried to understand) the school refused the offer and took all the books then threw them out. Well luckily for me and a bunch of other people i had english first period with Mrs P who loved books and gave permission for me and another guy named J to go out to the dumpster and pull them all out. Yes this is a dumpster dive tale.
We collect the shopping cart from Zellers that tends to sit around the school (another story, maybe in another post). I jumped into the dumpster and passed books out to him, he piled them into the cart and then we took it back to the class. Because we collected the books we got first pick from Mrs P.
Anywho one of the books i got was called The Scalpel, The Sword about the life of a brilliant Canadian surgeon who lived at the beginning of the 1900s. I never read it until now despite getting the book years ago. And i find it is a brilliant story. It is a work of captivating genius where it only has one character that you get any depth from and so few lines of actual dialogue and yet it is better than so many books that i have ever come across in the fiction side of the fence.
Which makes me question why is that? I mean fiction writers get so much room to play around, they create their own world, every single character, every thought and yet non-fiction seems to contain so much more quality than fiction. Why?
And the only conclusion i find is that it is far too easy to publish a book. (continued the next day, but don't worry i worked at 7 am so my rambling will be at least as bad as before)
I think the main virtue of these non-fiction books i have quoted so far, at least the ones about a specific person all share is that they are something which can show us what it means to truly feel empathetic. As well with books which are written about a person who has lived a famous life or changed the world in some manor we see what the protagonist of a novel truly should be like.
So many stories are about the man character who is completely ordinary and then thrust into a difficult situation where they need to develop new skills so they do. This shift in character is somewhat gradual but in the end is not as true to form as the person in a non-fiction book whom acts the same way through the entire book, seeming to simply become more of who they already are(don't know who said it first but it wasn't me).
Anywho my main point is this, read a few non-fiction books about people who changed the world. Make sure they have good authors. Then, after you get your taste of true characters from them, go back to fiction and start reading now that you know what a good book feels like.
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