Why am I unable to enjoy novels?

[fajfall]

I feel bored any time I read a novel. I love non-fiction because it's real, it's what people really experience. I enjoy fictional movies and mini series like Brideshead Revisited, but not reading them as it takes so many hours more.

I want to enjoy literature though, because I feel I'm missing out on something cultural, but I don't get it. I tried various famous novels (Frankenstein, Brave New World, Tennessee Williams', Rushdie's etc.). Surely essays and debates can communicate everything 1984 does and in less time with real examples, eg. North Korea.

Maybe I need to start with short children's novels instead?

[Calidore]

Just as there are many people like me who generally prefer reading fiction to nonfiction, there are many people like you who prefer nonfiction to fiction. By all means, keep trying different things, but with an eye to maybe finding something you like, rather than trying to force yourself to like something you feel you should.

If you post some examples of nonfiction you enjoy, maybe people here will have suggestions for fiction you might like.

[OrphanPip]

Maybe works of literature that fall somewhere between fiction and non-fiction might appeal to you, like Capote's In Cold Blood.

[Gladys]

I love non-fiction because it's real, it's what people really experience.

Funny that. I love fiction because it approaches much closer to reality than non-fiction. Good fiction exposes more of the human and less of the hype. Watching video is far less satisfactory than reading and contemplating fiction, where your own powerful imagination has free rein.

As much as I love Tennessee Williams, try something simpler like George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, which could almost pass as a children's book, until you think of yourself as young Maggie Tulliver or Philip Wakem. It's an easy read and all about what people, like us, really experience.

[Danik 2016]

In this forum we mostly discuss 19C and early 20 C Literature. Maybe you prefer more contemporary authors. Anyway I should have a look at short stories too.

[Red Terror]

I feel bored any time I read a novel. I love non-fiction because it's real, it's what people really experience. I enjoy fictional movies and mini series like Brideshead Revisited, but not reading them as it takes so many hours more.

I want to enjoy literature though, because I feel I'm missing out on something cultural, but I don't get it. I tried various famous novels (Frankenstein, Brave New World, Tennessee Williams', Rushdie's etc.). Surely essays and debates can communicate everything 1984 does and in less time with real examples, eg. North Korea.

Maybe I need to start with short children's novels instead?

Read A Clockwork Orange and you might find something right up your alley. Don't forget the nadsat translator!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:A_Clockwork_Orange

[Jackson Richardson]

That's OK to be bored by novels. I've come to the conclusion that I'm bored by DVDs and movies. Maybe it is that I'm in control reading a book and can take it up or put it down as I choose whereas the film means I'm stuck in front of it and it is in control.

As for fiction, Miss Prism was so right in The Importance of Being Earnest - "the good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily. That is the meaning of fiction."

(Seriously, I guess the problem with non-fiction is that it gives an author's individual take on a reality that can be quite different from what is others' experience. Whereas there is no appeal with fiction from the author to another reality.)

If you're bored by fiction, that's fine. Many of us will continue to be fascinated.

[Boblloyd91]

I used to be in the same boat as you. Before I talk about my experience though, I really want to tell you that it's totally fine, and there's nothing wrong. As others have said, some like fiction, some like nonfiction, some like poetry. I guess what got me liking fiction a bit more is in a way it does take what's real, and seems to key in on it. For example, when I read Les Miserables, it talks about real historical events, and real aspects of the human condition. These are then emphasized even more to open us up to higher levels of thought and contemplation. I think it's great you want to enjoy literature, and I think enjoying can mean more then one thing. We can be entertained, we can be challenged to think deeper, we can gain insight etc. On one level, I simply want to read comic books, such as Deadpool where there isn't much deep thought. However there is also that level I think all of us have where we want to make more meaning out of our complex human experience. This is where I find classical literature comes into play, where stories, interpretations and ideas that are old but haven't aged can be studied and can change how we see the world around us, as well as ourselves. It certainly takes work, but I feel I'm a better, more compassionate person due to reading Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, etc. Just my two cents

[fajfall]

I enjoy reading:
- Encyclopaedias, dictionaries.
- Newspapers and current affairs journals.
- All Christopher Hitchens' books and essays; Orwell's essays.
- Revisionist/blasphemous history essays and books, especially trying to figure out the true origins of Islam (eg. Patricia Crone, Ibn Warraq's 'Why I Am Not a Muslim).

[YesNo]

Generally I don't read fiction. We share that in common, fajfall.

I do read encyclopedia-type works. The local library has a large number of Oxford's "A Very Short Introduction" texts. These are longer than a wikipedia article (just over 100 pages) and yet give me a better idea of the overall subject matter. If I get puzzled by a topic, I try to find a book in that series on it. They are not all of equal quality, but even when I don't agree with an author, I now understand the author's position which puts me in a better position to argue against that very position.

However, I have reached a period in my life where I don't bother with dictionaries. I also avoid newspapers since there is an election going on now in the US and I have already voted (early), so why waste any more time on it. I trust the Cubs will win the World Series, but I don't think the game is over yet. I have read Christopher Hitchens, along with a few other pop atheists, when they were mentioned in threads here in the past and have no need to read any more. I must have read Orwell in high school.

I like revisionist and blasphemous writing. I usually call such writing "contrarian". My father would have called it "pig-headed". For example, do you think that we actually, really, truly put human beings on the Moon almost 50 years ago and yet for some mysterious reason can't repeat the experiment today?

What I am reading now is a book on Python programming, Roger Scruton's "Modern Philosophy", John Moffat's "Reinventing Gravity" (he revised Einstein's theory of gravity), and I would like to finish Abraham and Ledolter's "Statistical Methods for Forecasting". Let me see. Ah, nope. I looked. There's not a single novel on my desk.

[Pompey Bum]

To answer your question directly, the reason you are not enjoying novels is that you don't really want to read them. As you say, your concern that you are missing something cultural. But reading novels is having like sex: you can't fake it or at least you can't fake it and have a very good time. It's always best if you're in love with the book you're reading, but you should at least be interested in the author.

I wouldn't worry about it at all. Gladys is right that a novel (ironically and counterintuitively) can touch aspects of reality that non-fiction cannot, but you seem to be doing fine reading what you are reading. You are probably reading to learn--what's wrong with that? I spent at least a decade reading nothing but non-fiction, and I still read it often. There may be a time in your life when you become more interested in nuances of the human experience, in which case novels and poetry will still be there. In the meantime, read what you love. Them's my two in any case.

[Leopard]

I think you're right that essays and other forms of non-fiction are better for straightforward communication of ideas. Fictional works are more of an emotional experience and how much you get out of them is thus highly subjective. Although many classic works of fiction can be said to be objectively important because of their cultural influence I don't think there's much value in reading them just because of that.

[Red Terror]

That's OK to be bored by novels. I've come to the conclusion that I'm bored by DVDs and movies. Maybe it is that I'm in control reading a book and can take it up or put it down as I choose whereas the film means I'm stuck in front of it and it is in control.

As for fiction, Miss Prism was so right in The Importance of Being Earnest - "the good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily. That is the meaning of fiction."

(Seriously, I guess the problem with non-fiction is that it gives an author's individual take on a reality that can be quite different from what is others' experience. Whereas there is no appeal with fiction from the author to another reality.)

If you're bored by fiction, that's fine. Many of us will continue to be fascinated.

I hear you. I put on Mission Impossible 4 yesternight and fast-forwarded through most of it. I remember doing the same for Captain America and all its sequels. It's all puerile stuff. If you've seen one explosion, chase or fist-fight, you've pretty much seen them all.

[Jackson Richardson]

I'm just not one for action movies...

[Red Terror]

I'm just not one for action movies...

Have you seen The Wind that Shakes the Barley?? Or JFK??? These two are some of my favorites.

[seerseenbyseein]

I feel bored any time I read a novel. I love non-fiction because it's real, it's what people really experience. I enjoy fictional movies and mini series like Brideshead Revisited, but not reading them as it takes so many hours more.

I want to enjoy literature though, because I feel I'm missing out on something cultural, but I don't get it. I tried various famous novels (Frankenstein, Brave New World, Tennessee Williams', Rushdie's etc.). Surely essays and debates can communicate everything 1984 does and in less time with real examples, eg. North Korea.

Maybe I need to start with short children's novels instead?

Unless you are a child, don't start with kid's stuff novels. Don't do novels at all, at first. Get collections of outstanding short stories. Look through the stories, trying them out until you find one that hooks you. Read that. Then repeat the process. If you have anything in you at all that can develop into a novel reader, this mode of operation might switch it on.

[Tiffleton]

We all have our own reasons for liking what we do. I enjoy how writers use language to weave ideas and images. Maybe start with contemporary literature written in a style you're familiar with. Once you've found an author you like, you'll move to others, and your literary horizons will expand. Good luck. Don't give up trying!

[Bookman12]

That's OK to be bored by novels. I've come to the conclusion that I'm bored by DVDs and movies.

I am exactly the same, when it comes to movies, I just don't seem to have the attention span, yet I can sit and read a book for hours on end. I guess we just like what we like, and there is nothing wrong with that.

[Wenalis Dunn]

There are more books than you can possibly read in your entire life. If you say you prefer non-fiction over fictional novels I can relate to a certain point. And that feeling goes deeper than most people think. It is like you can't listen to cd's because when you listen to cd's you are basically listening to something recorded a while a go and you were not there, and you think, I rather listen to a live cd...or better....I turn on the radio, so I have straight realtime feedback on what is happening in this world.
So your angst to miss out on something because you are not reading novels (specially the ones often suggested you should be reading) clashes with your curiosity/want of news gathering on what's going on today. That is because you only have so much time in your life to read this or that. It's basically a filter that you are lacking. That filter you have to grow for yourself, otherwise you will go nuts. In my case, the reason I hated reading novels (or the top-250 bestsellers) was because I thought I would miss out on a lot of non-fiction facts that inspired a lot of novel writers. It's like a fan that hangs posters above his bedroom wall of that person he admires, but I, for instance, never did so, because I, on the contrary, wanted to know which writers, artists inspired my idols. And ultimately those became my idols too...."mise en abyme" wise. There are intellectuals who read so much novels and non-fiction so that the wall between them crumbled. That is something you could opt for to aspire. But what is wrong with reading non-fiction only? If at all, you cannot miss out on the facts if you remain that tendency. And the world needs more non-fiction minded people more than novelists. Good fake-news, so hot today, is written by novelists who go for certainty and instead of writing books they side a clown like Putin by spreading wonderful bull****. Sometimes fiction, like 1984, warns you to distrust those people. That is where fiction can be more powerful than non-fiction. And besides all that....reading a non-fiction book or novel, both will never make you dumber than you were, it can only make you smarter.
Unless you forget the difference between them two.

What is true however is that when you read a lot of non-fiction about mythology and human history in general you will gain more insight into the world you are living in today. Maybe it's best to read books that naturally come across your path - it will surprise you how much gems you'll run into that way.

Some people say it takes imagination to read and or write a novel. But if that is true, modern "non-fiction" news channels need writers and readers of novels to interpreted the real news. The most important thing you must master yourself when reading books is "Hermeneutics". Basically this means reading between the lines. I can read a book technically by reading all the letters in it, but do you know the underlying meaning of it all then? That is why I distrust speedreading...it perhaps promises what it says, but does one, who speed reads, grasp the overall message? In non-fiction you could care less about that for it must be assumed that most of the writers are not writing between the lines....right? That is biggest misunderstanding, a lot of them do!

So please read novels and non-fiction. Because trivial knowledge is nice, but you have to back up that knowledge sooner or later.