How is your book reading divided between fiction and non-fiction?

There's enough news, blogs and documentation on the internet to cover my non-fiction needs.

I would say my book reading is 100% fiction but for Guy Gavriel Kay pseudo-historical fiction or RPG splat-books that describe real locations and History such as Ars Magica.

If I'm using books, it's because I don't want to stare at a screen before bed.

I used to read more fiction than non-fiction, but that has reversed as I've gotten older. This evolution happened slowly and without me being consciously aware of it most of the time, but recently I've been wondering "why?" What I've decided is that there is more good but non-challenging non-fiction than there is fiction.

Some books are challenging to read -- and that's great. I like a good mental workout. But it can take me a month or so to work through a book like that. For instance, right now I'm reading Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg. It's excellent and I highly recommend it, but it's also exhausting! I can read maybe 20 pages of it a night, four or five nights a week.

So often I want something a little lighter. I might read 2-4 challenging books in a year, but something like 8-10 easier ones. The problem is that while I want something "lighter" and "easier," I still want those books to be intelligent, well-written, etc. In short, I want them to be good. Sometimes this is a problem.

Both fiction and non-fiction can be challenging or non-challenging, as well as good or bad. What I've found is that it's much easier to find non-challenging but still good non-fiction. With fiction, books that are non-challenging are often pretty bad, and books that are good are often fairly challenging. For example, a while back I read the Song of Ice and Fire books. The first few were great! Dead center in the venn diagram overlap between non-challenging and good. But as the series progressed, the books started to get more ... well, bad. The most recently one, while still not challenging, was also not very good.

If anyone can recommend novels that are both good and non-challenging, I'd love some suggestions!

Non fiction tends to get a bad rap because people think of reading a text book from school. But not every piece of non fiction is as dry as reading an encyclopedia -- there are plenty of books that are both as gripping as any fiction novel, and also illuminating.

A great example is Matterhon by Karl Marlantes. The book is technically non-fiction because it's true, but it's written as a novel (about being in Vietnam). It was as gripping as any fiction writer's novel, but by the end of it you really have a good sense of what it was like to be in Vietnam, and a better understanding of the struggle of Veterans returning home.

Then there is non fiction that's maybe better titled "self help." If you're reading those books, it's a different type of reading. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Awaken the Giant -- all these sorts of books will be a really great help for your career and life. But if I'm sitting down and reading one, it's not because I'm looking to get lost (as the case will be when Patrick Rothfuss releases his next novel), but because I want to improve my life[1]. Same thing when I'm trying to brush up on my skills and stay current with new reference books. And the reading is different. While I might get lost in a novel by Neil Gaiman, for instance, reading of 7 Habits is more methodical, as in "I should read a chapter tonight"

Conversely, not all fiction has worlds you want to just get lost in. Ulysses, Proust's Remembrances of Things past [2], and any other number of books classified as "literature" present mountains to climb, partly for just the feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing them. They can feel more like reading 7 Habits, as in "Oh I should read a few more chapters to better myself"

[1] You may laugh at this. I laughed at people who read such books when I was 20. But what I've found in my old age is that they really can help you in your career. For instance, your boss won't promote you to a manager if he doesn't think you're ready. While you might consider trial and error as a learning path, it'll be much longer. And it's a bit foolish, because only a fool would learn from his own mistakes when he can just spend some time and find out from others how to do what he wants.

[2] If you're prone to argue about the translation of the title (literary nerds unite!), let's just call it À la recherche du temps perdu.

I'm 100% fiction not including learning materials even though they are in books I've just never really considered those "books". Study aids aren't books in my mind for whatever reason.

His Baroque Cycle keeps throwing tidbits of history in there that actually educate the audience. People should be warned.

I'm only counting books when I say 100% fiction. If I include reading on the intarweeb, it's probably 50-50 due to all the news sites and documentation I peruse.

Honestly, to this day, as books concerned, I do not know the difference between "fiction" and "non-fiction".

On more than one occasion I was told that the "fiction" is a genre of its own, not related to the sci-fi and the fantasy, which I read the most.

P.S. Since it is a /., using the opportunity, one might as well ask other what e-book readers they do use. And when they find time to read the books.

The truth is that I almost never read books any more. I listen to them, because audio books are much more efficient for me. Of course the narrators speak much more slowly than I read text (even though I often run them at 2X speed), but while listening I can accomplish something else, too. I can listen while exercising, while driving, while fixing things around the house, shoveling snow, cleaning the cars, etc., etc., etc. This makes reading less of an indulgence and more of an optimization. I find that the amount of non-fiction I consume has increased dramatically of late (used to be 90/10 in favor of fiction, now it's 60/40 in favor of non-fiction), though I'm not sure if that's because I'm simply less interested in fiction than I used to be or because of some aspect of the format.

The big downside to audiobooks, of course, is that a lot of stuff hasn't been produced in audio format. Audible has a pretty good selection, but it's a tiny fraction of what's available in print, and a fraction biased towards popularity (which is good and bad). A lesser disadvantage is that the quality of an audiobook is dependent almost as much on the skill of the narrator as on the skill of the author. In particular, a bad narration can ruin a great book (though even an outstanding narration can rarely save a bad one). Oh, and there's also cost; audiobooks are more expensive, even with Audible's platinum membership, and they can't be easily lent or resold, but on balance I'm willing to pay the higher prices for all of the advantages I get from audio.

That's a neat graph at 2332 votes: there are two peaks, at 80/20 and at 20/80. Interesting.

I'm reading the Bible and books about it, to try to figure out whether or not it's fiction.

Depending on the honesty of the vendor, I'd imagine that they're somewhere in between 60-90% Non Fiction.

But, seriously, there is always some crap in there that is either inaccurate, outdated, or just marketing puffery.