“The challenge of nonfiction is to marry art and truth” — Phyllis Rose
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth” — Albert Camus
Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction? While I truly enjoy a good a nonfiction book, I adore novels. The first novel I remember reading is The Grist Mill Secret which I checked out from the bookmobile when I was in first or second grade. Set in pre-revolutionary Massachusetts, it had suspense, intrigue, and spies. I was hooked. Since then, my love of novels has only grown. When I married my husband, I was dismayed to discover that he did not read novels–at all. He enjoyed nonfiction, particularly books on business, finance, and economics. My degree is in English, his in Economics, so maybe our different tastes in literature were not too surprising! Over the years, I came to enjoy reading nonfiction but he stubbornly resisted fiction. I couldn’t even get him to read Harry Potter! A few years ago, he joined a book group with some colleagues from work. They were very ambitious in their reading and chose Tolstoy’s War and Peace as their first book. My husband loved it. He went on read other classic novels such as A Tale of Two Cities, The Road, Anna Karenina, Shogun, and Cry the Beloved Country among many others. For years he had teased me about all the books I bought (which in fairness was well deserved) and then he started buying books–very nice books, not the cheap paperbacks I typically bought. A small package arrived one day and he was very excited when he opened it. Inside was a book stamp, with a seal bearing his name –and only his name, to mark his library of books. I was stunned–I didn’t have a stamp for my books! Not long after that, another small package arrived, this time bearing a stamp with my name on it. We had a good laugh and we now have our own personal seals to mark our books. The moral of this story? Don’t give up on your loved ones trying new genres of literature and if you buy yourself a book stamp, be sure to buy one for the other book lovers in your home!
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