I've been filling my bored mind with brain food occasionally digging into some very general non-fiction all across the board. Recently I find myself switching between non-fiction and fiction, on and off. The last non-fiction book I read was a book called "Beyond the River", which was a book about the underground railroad in ohio, by the ohio river. My grandmother worked at a church that pretty much was a main place for crossing the ohio river in Ripley, Ohio, and shared the book with my family, and it was generally an interesting book.

I finished Lunar Park recently, and am gonna be moving onto my next non-fiction book, Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It was given to me by my uncle and I think it'll work for the time being. Hoping its not as loopy as said uncle is.

Anyways, Any of you folks delve into non-fiction occasionally? What do you read? Anything that piques your curiosity or just stuff for school or research? Or do you adamantly despise non-fiction?

I only read a few bits of nonfiction here and there, but not too often to be honest. The most common types of non-fiction I read are biographies or autobiographies. (to name an example, Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis...the lead vocalist of Red Hot Chili Peppers.)

I also occasionally read essays on various subjects, usually art history or something based on an interesting person in history. But other than that I usually don't. :<

I don't think I've really read much non-fiction. There have been a few books I've read regarding Hitler and Germany during WWII along with the odd biographies on people like Shostakovich, but beyond that I don't really read much non-fiction. Not that I don't like it, I just don't read it much...

Ah, I'm a bit different from DB. I usually don't like it. I think a lot of readers here, and probably everywhere, just find fiction to be much more engaging and exciting. As for me, I like reading a fiction book as some kind of a way to 'escape' from reality for a little bit of time. A lot of people who like to read most likely will read fiction 10-1 to non fiction. It could be that there's more fiction books than non, or other factors I lightly mentioned. Not to say that non fiction is not interesting or exciting, with some of them, I'm sure that they are.

It could be with being forced to read english and history books for years during school and having to read Ann Frank three or four times, that would be the catalyst for me not having much interest or enjoyment in non fiction. That isn't entirely true, but I just never really have much of an interest in reading them. People will put fiction on their waiting lists, but probably, hardly ever would a non fiction creep to a waiting list. And if it is, it's a celebrity of sorts that is writing the book or is what the book is about. Or its Rosie or Madonna's estranged brother writing tell all's. People eat that stuff up.

I will say though, when I was younger, I read a non fiction story about the Titanic, which I was fascinated with as a child. It was very telling, and was certainly easy to grab you, or at least it was for me. It was one of those that had pictures in the middle of the book, showing underwater wreckage of the ship and whatnot. Then at the end it had like 50 or 70+ pages that were all diary notes from different people on the ship, before and after they were on. You were able to get a lot of different impressions and viewpoints since the Titanic held low class and high class passengers. Anyway, some non fiction are able to grab you. I guess I'm just of the darker type of personality and go for the mass tragedies.

I could really go either way on this subject, I love Fiction with a passion, but Non-fiction just has such an allure to it, learning about how people react to different obstacles in real life, in times past, it engages my mind just as much as non-fiction does, but in a very different manner... However, as far as non-fiction goes, I am usually caught with a book about some obscure or esoteric wisdom, usually old world religions or philosophies...

*sigh* With work and school and school and work and women and work and school, I don't really have much time for fiction. I've been re-reading The Catcher in the Rye for the billionth time, but it's taking far longer than it ever has. But non-fiction I'm reading a lot more.

I usually read lots of stuff about computers. Recent books have been about Micro$oft's anti-trust lawsuits and the development of the GNU and Free and Open Software. Also about three programming languages, and trying to learn Japanese from a book. I read some other stuff in class, but that just bores me to death.

Also, political satire and Ann Coulter... I know Ann is fiction, but what would you call something like Dude, Where's my Country?