Why I read non-fiction
Despite how I may have represented my reading list in the past, I do, in fact, read fiction books. I actually shy away from genre titles because I've never been a huge fan of sci-fi/fantasy writing as I have sci-fi/fantasy anything else. (Yet I love genre comics. Yeah, I don't get it either.)
However, I have earned a reputation as a lover of non-fiction. It's cliche but true that life is stranger than fiction, and that has such a strong appeal for me. If I didn't read non-fiction, I wouldn't know that Alexander Hamilton had a friend named Hercules Mulligan. You can't make this stuff up. To whit, a selection from a book I got last night and am already disturbingly enveloped by:
"...by 1885, George Stanley had met and married a twenty-two-year-old Welsh girl named Annie Jane Millward, one of three daughters from a severely strict Methodist clan whose matriarch, Mary, refused to utter a word of the devil's English."
Mary Millward would be John Lennon's maternal great-grandmother.
The book I'm reading is The Beatles by Bob Spitz. I can tell I'm going to enjoy this. A little bit of wry humor mixed with a detail like that? Oh yeah. (Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah...Imaaaaagine I'm in love with you...)
However, I have earned a reputation as a lover of non-fiction. It's cliche but true that life is stranger than fiction, and that has such a strong appeal for me. If I didn't read non-fiction, I wouldn't know that Alexander Hamilton had a friend named Hercules Mulligan. You can't make this stuff up. To whit, a selection from a book I got last night and am already disturbingly enveloped by:
"...by 1885, George Stanley had met and married a twenty-two-year-old Welsh girl named Annie Jane Millward, one of three daughters from a severely strict Methodist clan whose matriarch, Mary, refused to utter a word of the devil's English."
Mary Millward would be John Lennon's maternal great-grandmother.
The book I'm reading is The Beatles by Bob Spitz. I can tell I'm going to enjoy this. A little bit of wry humor mixed with a detail like that? Oh yeah. (Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah...Imaaaaagine I'm in love with you...)