Why So Unserious? A Rant Against Reading Fiction

Seth J. Connell
Aug 29, 2017 · 2 min read

I recently checked the best-seller rack at a local Barnes and Nobel. The results shocked me a little. I instantly became depressed after discovering that almost every book on the rack was fictional — most of them being romance novels! Then I realized that most books, period, in the building were fiction, with only a small section dedicated to topics like philosophy or finance.

This reflects what’s wrong society. I mean, reading a dumb John C. Maxwell book once in a while to lose a few important brain cells is one thing — but choosing to ignore wholesome books for fictional stories? That’s just plain stupid.

Where have all the serious readers gone? What happened to the people like Thomas Edison, who would read every book in the library to know as much as humanly possible? Instead, we seem to be living in a time where knowledge is being discarded for cheap thrillers and badly written fantasy stories.

I’ve never been much of a fiction reader, as you probably guessed (I hope you figured that out already). The small amount of fiction I do read is a minuscule part of my actual reading. I spend my time reading books on finance, business, philosophy, academic papers, and anything else that might help me down the road.

Life is too short for fiction. It’s a bad sign when the majority of people choose to spend most of their waking hours reading storybooks while the vital books in the world go untouched.

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Technologist. Writer. Musician. Amateur Indian Relic Hunter. Entrepreneur.

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