Truthfully, this is the first year I've given any serious consideration to non-fiction. This summer, I started off reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, and then it hit me: everything in the book is true, and I still couldn't put it down. Now that's saying something.
Larson has mastered the art of storytelling. It doesn't matter that TDITWC is grounded in historical fact--he picks out significant, compelling details and parses them together in a fresh and memorable way.
After I got my feet wet with TDITWC, I discovered the same is true even in the realm of science. I initially picked up Joshua Foer's bestseller Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything solely because Joshua is brother to Jonathan Safran Foer, one of my literary idols. Truthfully, I was kind of just hoping JSF had edited it. And it had cool cover art. And it was required summer reading.
But upon reading the book, I discovered a shocking truth: It was funny. It was ENTERTAINING. In Moonwalking, Foer intermingles scientific case studies with uproarious drinking escapades and memory-nerd shenanigans. Surprisingly, the driving force behind this scientific account is humor. By humanizing characters, Foer was able to hold even my attention.
I gave creative non-fiction a try, and whaddyaknow, I liked it. This is definitely a genre I'll be exploring in the future. I guess sometimes the truth really can be stranger (or more entertaining) than fiction.
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