Reading books is one of my favorite hobbies (see my article on why I read every day). This includes fiction as well as non-fiction. Both have their merits, and fiction is not only useful for entertainment purposes. Because of their inherent differences, I will talk about fiction and non-fiction separately.
Non-Fiction
There are many non-fiction books out there that are worth reading. Many of them will aim to convey ideas or scientific facts. A well-written non-fiction book will explain an idea and give some perspective on the idea, helping one understand the idea from multiple viewpoints and its motivation. The reader will learn about a topic and understand why the writer was interested in the topic. Ideally, this will suffice to make the reader enthusiastic about the topic as well.
Books like “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins and “Why we sleep” by Matthew Walker (my article on sleep, inspired by this book) seriously influenced my thinking and made me interested in entirely new fields of knowledge. Not only did I learn about scientific facts, but also about a certain perspective. “The Selfish Gene,” for example, has taught me to try to understand many situations through the lens of evolution and game theory (even more so than I – a mathematician – did anyways).
Summaries?
I know that many people like reading summaries of books. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, a summary can quickly introduce the main points and explain them. On the other hand, I strongly believe in understanding the thoughts behind ideas. A summary will often do a good job of conveying the key arguments, but a good writer will reveal the entire process that led to them. This helps understand important thoughts instead of just being able to repeat them – a distinction that cannot be overestimated.
In my opinion, summaries are quite useful when choosing which book to read next but should not be seen as a replacement for reading the books themselves.
Fiction
Let me say that I am not unbiased here (obviously). I have always enjoyed reading fiction, starting with Fantasy like the Harry Potter series or Lord of the Rings and later getting into Kafka or Dostoyevsky. Depending on the reader’s needs and inclinations, different levels of sophistication are available.
Fiction can use narrative and a main character to convey ideas. Great works of fiction can teach us much about life while getting us hooked on the story. This is why many tales have existed for centuries and longer (e.g., fairy tales). They talk about themes that are important to us and that stay relevant. Many books strike me as extremely prophetic or perfectly suited to the present time despite being written a long time ago (e.g., books by Dostoyevsky, Huxley, Orwell…).
The main character can struggle with problems, and we get to see them from the outside, projecting our own understandings and situations on the main character. This means that we can see someone else struggle with our own psychological (or physical) problems without having to confront them in an overly emotional way.
One example of this is the book “Notes from the Underground” by Dostoyevsky: I recommended this book to my book club, and after reading it, somebody asked me what I learned from it. My answer was: Don’t be that guy (the main character). He deals with many terrible emotions (jealousy, shame, arrogance, inferiority, and many others) and can seem quite revolting at first glance. But when one really thinks about the character, it is easy to notice that his behavior is not that strange, and it is easy to fall into the same pitfalls as him. This type of negative example had a much stronger impact on me than if Dostoyevsky had just written: “Do not be spiteful, vengeful or resentful. Start working on your own faults before condemning others for theirs”.
Conclusion
Reading has been a big part of my life and has helped me learn about new concepts. I read both fiction and non-fiction, and both have been of great value to me, and I highly recommend it 😉