forestofglory

I've been talking with some friends about reading non-fiction vs finding and accessing information.

spindizzy, who is librarian has been struggling to read non-fiction. She was like " but I'm good at finding information! Why is this hard?" and we where like "those are two very different skills!"

For me reading non-fiction is not about learning a collection of facts. I don't worry that much about retaining facts when I read non-fiction books. A good non-fiction book is making an argument about the world. (Memoirs might be an exception to this, they are more about sharing lived experience) When I read a book of tea history I understand more about the role of tea in the evolution of Chinese Buddhism, for example.Or Nature's Metropolis was mind blowing to me because it rearranged how I think of cities and county and also challenged the myth of the frontier. I sometimes get frustrated with books by journalist is because they are making bad arguments or just really boring ones designed to appeal of a lot of people. That's a bit unfair. Ok academics also make bad arguments, plus some academic writing is really terrible.

Looking up information is totally different skill, that's a lot about understanding systems, and being good at search terms and stuff. But reading non-fiction is about understanding arguments, much more than it is about learning facts.