I think the problem is here. Yes, it’s made-up, but it’s not bullshit (depending on your taste in literature, of course 
).
And no, you’re not exactly supposed to interpret it as reality. As you yourself said before, it’s made-up. It’s a story that you read and enjoy and then finish.
Like others have said, it involves suspension of disbelief. Or as I take it, a little bit of escapism for however long it takes to read the book. You escape ito that world for a couple of days (an hour at a time or whatever) and just enjoy it for face value. You aren’t meant to believe it’s reality. It’s just a story to read and enjoy.
Just my opinion, of course.
I have moved more to non-fiction as I get older, and I’ve not really considered why.
I enjoy movies and shows like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica (the new one, Boston Legal, etc. So it’s not a problem of not enjoying fictional stories.
So, just thinking about it now, I tend to prefer visual media that is fictional, and printed media that is non-fiction.
Hmmm, interesting…
I do enjoy the History Channel and Biographies on A&E as well, so there are exceptions to that of course. And I adore books like The Color Purple and To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.
But my tendencies are to grab non-fiction books whenever possible.
Exactly.
Re the OP.
No, you’re not unique. I’ve met several people who have similar views.
Personally, I don’t understand it - I’m with the posters who’ve pointed out that good fiction always has something to say about human nature, and that Medea predates Susan Smith by a good several years.
Having said that, as long as you don’t mind my reading my fiction as well as non-fiction, we’re fine. Heck, you read. 'Bout the only people I can’t ‘get’ are non-readers. (I once gave my roommate at the time, a dog-lover, a spare copy of the For Better or For Worse collection of strips about Farley. And was told she didn’t like reading. :eek: )
Snip. I met you in person. At the time, you didn’t *seem * wacko, but perhaps you (and your wife who designs beautiful jewelry) just concealed it well. 
Oh, and count me in as being interested in the result of your fiction reading experiment.
How you doing?
One of the first questions I ask women I’m looking at online is what they read.
Wow - I thought it was just me!
I’m not interested in most fiction either, in any medium. I don’t care for movies (partly that’s my inability to sit still and pay attention for longer than 10 seconds) or TV shows or written material that is fictional.
It’s weird too, because I’ve always been a big reader, and included fiction in my interests. It just seems that in the last 10 - 15 years I’ve become more focused on non-fiction.
I always had lots of reading material of all kinds available to me when I was a kid and enjoyed it all. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis or something.
As I said earlier, I have gotten the same way as I have gotten older.
Do you think it is because as we get older, and we’ve seen so many takes on the same seven stories, that we’ll just go for truth…which I hear is STRANGER than fiction?
Not just your opinion, Biblio. The sentence you quoted jumped out at me as well. Leaffan, why would you think that you’re supposed to interpret fiction as reality? Fiction is fiction – by definition it is not reality. That’s what I enjoy about it. I’m a great fan of non-fiction, particularly history and biography, but that’s the real, nitty-gritty true stuff. I read fiction when I want something more fantastical, or romantic, or exciting, or fun than real life could ever hope to be.
A favorite story of mine involves the first time I ever saw Kenneth Branaugh’s film version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. As I exited the theater, completely captivated (I went back and saw the movie again the next day), I saw two two young teenage girls, each leaving with her own family. One girl complained, “That was so stupid! Everybody was talking to themselves.” The other girl said wistfully to her parents, “Why can’t real life be like that?”
I read fiction to see what real life could be like. If I want to see what it is like, there’s always non-fiction – or the news.
I’m just the opposite. I rarely read non-fiction unless it’s about a topic I’m obsessed with, and even then, I’d rather read webpages or even watch documentaries (if they exist) about the topic in question. I don’t like auto- or biographies unless they’re about someone I’m really enraptured with, and even then, it takes longer to read them than fiction and I can’t really get into it. I don’t know what it is–maybe I just don’t like the “expository” feel of most non-fiction. I’ve read a few “fictionalized” biographies that I liked because they read more like fiction, but a lot of biographies have all these lists and dates and stuff, and that just draws me right out of the book.
I just looked at my 2005 reading list, and so far I’ve read seven non-fiction books to forty-eight fiction books. Three of them are (auto-)biographies. Different strokes, I guess.
It was in a work of fiction prior to 9/11; in fact, it seemed a pretty believable scenario to me (but not to Condoleezza Rice, apparently).
Incidentally, there was in fact a mutiny. On the Bounty.
Note that in fiction, the most important thing is usually not what happens, but why.
This cracked me up – I am a fan of both fiction and non-fiction reading, but sometimes when reading, say, a book about the Revolutionary War, I find myself thinking “Hmmm, I think I know how this is going to end …”
Don’t tell me! I’m not finished it yet!
Maybe that was a bad example. There are plenty of non-fiction stories (Into Thin Air , for example) where I really don’t know who will live or die.
George Washington wins.
Put me firmly in the non-fiction camp. Although I enjoy some fiction - Heinlein, Conan Doyle, Wells - I would much rather read about the real accomplishments of real people than what some hack thinks they should be. I mean, what work of fiction could compare to the real drama of say the Apollo XIII mission?
Yep. That’s me. News is fragmented enough that I can tune in and out when I want to. Most TV shows and movies require way too much devotion of my time. I’d rather read the paper or watch the news than sit through a “reality” TV show or try to follow the plot of just about any movie.
My mind tends to wander while watching movies and I end up not knowing, or caring for that matter, what’s going on.
Me watching a movie “Who’s that guy again? Oh. And why does he want to kill that other guy? Oh. So why did they go to the warehouse in the first place? And why did that girl with the fake Russian accent empty the jar of scorpions into the laundry hamper. Oh… I think I’ll go read the paper…”
This short NYT essay: Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction, by Rachael Donadio touches on a lot of the points made by dopers in this thread.
When you ‘factor-out’ major fiction blockbusters which skew the numbers (i.e. Da Vinci Code)
WNYC-FM Mp3 link: Discussion with the essayist who wrote the piece above, host Brian Lehrer and DJ/author Jonathan Schwartz.
OK, wait, let me see if I get it – is part of your issue then attention-span related, as in, you feel that since you can devote very little attention at a time, you might as well only use each chance to grab some straight information?
How do you react to a long-format documentary/news-special?
Does the non-fiction you read tend to be weighted towards collections of short-form pieces (e.g. collections of essays) or long-format whole-book treatises?
When you DO read long-format treatises, are they on issues and people to which you already have a certain frame of reference – or do you find that in NF reading you CAN keep track of who’s who and what’s the sequence of events?
And count me in with those to whom
sounds like you’ve fallen into over-analyzing. You are NOT expected to interpret it as reality. You should not be expected to like it or enjoy it, either, if it just doesn’t click with you. But you seem to be misinterpreting the point behind fiction.
It was a fine example, although it’s funny because to me, that’s one of the qualities of good non-fiction … if the writing is so good that I forget that I know how it ends, and I get the same emotional suspenseful feelings as if it were fiction, then I’m very happy with my choice. A book example is Seabiscuit, and I knew the outcome of just about every race before I read it, and still got so caught up in the match race that I missed my train stop (Run, Seabiscuit, run! Oh wait, was that my outloud voice?), and a movie example is Apollo 13, where I was frenzied with the suspense of whether or not they make it home, and ya know, obviously they do.
Huh, that’s weird. My favorite non-fiction reads like fiction, because I “forget” for the moment that I already know the outcome, and my favorite fiction reads like non-fiction, because it feels so real that I believe it could be true.