Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Reading Nonfiction

I like looking at the 'new books' collection at the library. It offers a sampling of all of the different sections of the library in one area. I sat there in front of one of these shelves today and picked out a stack of interesting books, most (all?) of them nonfiction. The Oakland Libraries, due to budget cuts, are closing from Dec 24th to Jan 1st. So I stocked up on books.

I discovered the world of nonfiction books in 11th grade. My history teacher showed us a book called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" in the beginning of the year. I thought the title sounded interesting and later that year I asked to borrow it and then spent most of the weekend finishing it. It's a book about how high school history classes glorify "heroes" and teach inaccurate things. The topics in the book are very interesting. The big thing that I've associated this book with though, is that it opened the world of nonfiction to me. Nonfiction for kids is limited to picture books that contain "facts" and always seemed very dry to me. Before that book, I always wondered why the library was filled with mostly nonfiction books when the fiction books were all that I read. Anyway, just wanted to share a milestone moment of my life.

1 comment:

X said...

I like looking at the new books section too! ^_^

I've stayed away from non-fiction books myself too because as a kid they seemed very dry. But recently quite a few people around me have been reading them and proved to me that they are not quite what I thought they were.