For the past five years or so, I have done a pretty good job of setting aside time for reading. I’ve read and learned from many books about strength, conditioning, diet, outdoor recreation, military strategy, personal finance, human behavior, philosophy and more. On the physical fitness side, I can confidently recommend books for folks at all levels of ability.
However, I was always reluctant to read the kind of books that most people enjoy: fiction. I fought it for years. My opinion was that there are so many good stories that actually happened, why should I spend time reading about things that aren’t true? This was a fallacious view for all kinds of reasons that we don’t need to dive into. Long story short, I recently changed my tune and decided to start reading fiction for two reasons:
You can still learn (especially as a writer) from fiction.
Reading novels or short stories in the evening helps me fall asleep.
That’s right; reading fiction is a fantastic sleep aid. Reading non-fiction, especially if related to training methodology, is very thought-provoking. Often times, if I were to read a chapter of something like Westside Barbell Book of Methods before bed, I would lie in bed thinking about how to optimize my bench press training instead of falling asleep. Reading a chapter of a novel, however, gets my mind off of the stresses of life and ready to sleep like a baby.
My current reading routine is something like this:
Mornings: devotional and scripture reading, usually followed by philosophy (currently, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations), and then my current non-fiction book (I just finished Swede Burns’ 5th Set for Powerlifting and started Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation)
Throughout the day: bite-sized articles or chapters of e-books related to training or work
Evenings: novels or short stories (so far this year I have read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, and a couple of Conrad’s short stories; I just started Absalom, Absalom)
Wow, you went straight for the big guns in fiction! But I love it. I, too, used to stay away from fiction mostly just because I loved theology, spiritual formation and memoir (the latter still being my favorite genre), but now I appreciate fiction so much more. I also like to read that before bed and non-fiction in the mornings when I like to read and write and reflect.