Hello everyone. 35F here. I used to be a huge fan of good non-fiction my whole life. I love learning, so non-fiction was the perfect route for me to achieve that post-college.
A few weeks ago I binge read a few non-fiction health books one after the other to troubleshoot some health symptoms I was having. I was thankfully able to locate a gluten intolerance through all the books I read but it also turned me off of non-fiction completely. Because I noticed that all non-fiction authors use scare tactics to sell their book.
I now want to donate all the non-fiction I own because I find it is all scaremongering.
Does anyone relate? Has anyone ever gone through something like that? Or is this just a temporary feeling because I just binge read a bunch of non-fiction?
by AcademicPreference54
7 Comments
Do you mean self help books? That is a very small percent of nonfiction books as a whole.
I have a whole shelf of non fiction books without scare tactics if you’re asking for recommendations.
Currently starting “entangled life” about fungi
All time favorite “a brief history of nearly everything” by bill Bryson
Do you enjoy any other kinds of nonfiction? Biographies, for instance?
History and biography books don’t have any “scaremongering” as far as I know, unless you count admonitions about “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” as scare tactics?
I guess you and I read very different types of non-fiction
Sadly a lot of self-help and alternative medicine themed books are really fiction. The “scare tactics” are indeed a red flag and are neither needed or used by most authors.
Going to university is great but it can turn you off reading non-fiction so try taking a break, read some fiction, and then you might find that non-fiction is okay after a break.
Try reading books on history or past civilizations or astronomy or philosophy. Non-fiction covers an awful lot and it sounds like you’ve restricted your reading to health matters.
The biggest issue with nonfiction is that it isn’t one genre. Me reading about the hypothesis of the causalities of historical events is subject to an entirely different set of factors then reading contemporary health and social journalism.
My best suggestion is to find a style of nonfiction that was related to what you read before but lacking the issues you found with the previous.