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It’s Thursday:Fiction reading as a learning tool?

Written on: March 4th, 2010 by: in Blog Posts, Learning, Learning Journeys, Reading

After zipping through 2 fiction titles in one week on my commute and zapping through 2 more over the weekend, I stopped and looked around. My fiction selections for the last few years have been confined to “reading with my ears” as I ride to and from work each day. But over the last few months even this has waned. So, what’s up? It’s the words. I am in need of imaginative narrative, of a beautifully turned phrase. Has this happened to you? Sometimes we need to form mental images of people, things and places that do not exist. Or, maybe they do exist but have been reinvented within a story.

In terms of my learning paths, fiction often provides the context for my non-fiction explorations. It provides color to the pencil drawings. A fellow librarian once said, “Non-fiction helps me learn about my world outside. Fiction helps me learn about my world inside.” Beautiful words, aren’t they? Find many more in my favorite reads from last week: Kostava’s The Historian and Hambley’s Homeland.