Back, longer ago than I am willing to admit, I gave up on trying to read books of higher learning.

I love information.  I love understanding the complexities and simplicities of what makes and drives everything.  I got to a point, many years ago, that with having chronic sleep deprivation and being the memory bank and organizer for multiple individuals, I could no longer process extra information.  I began wanting to let my brain shut down instead of trying stuff more particulars in.  I started to read ‘fluff’, books for entertainment.  Books, that theoretically, didn’t require me to think.  To me, books were a better brain alternative than television, because I was still imagining how characters looked and sounded, and could make mental maps of their environments.

Over time, I have found that even though I am reading material that is considered to have no educational value, I have learned things.  I have learned of other cultures; virtually experienced environments in which I will never be; social, familial, situational events that have not been my reality.  Yes, it is fiction.  Yes, things are manipulated, exaggerated, contrived for the sake of entertainment, emotional involvement (characters always seem far better or, equally, abysmally worse at communicating than people truly are) and engagement.  Fiction can perpetuate cultural mythologies (the princess being rescued by the handsome, strapping icon of male virility), manipulate reality (male pregnancy), and set off in an entirely new adventure (space the final frontier, or is it).  It communicates the values of our present, the darkness in our systems and psyches, it can manipulate our concepts and change our minds about how we view things…

…or maybe it just washes over our brains leaving nothing but the feeling of having read a good book.