Have you noticed that people recommend non-fiction books more readily than they do Fiction? Maybe its just the circles in which I run. But I think there is more.

Fiction is hard to do well. Good fiction is even harder. So I may have, without knowing, shut myself off from people who recommend fiction after having a string of bad recommendations.

I don't think non-fiction is that much easier. But fiction has to bear the burden of painting an emotional picture that nonfiction does not.

So I have been reading a lot of nonfiction. And it is great. I feel like my brain is getting a workout. I just finished Upheaval by Jared Diamond yesterday. I finished the email book the weekend after it came out. Thats two books just this month. I'm reading a book on economics right now that was written in 1970. Its hard, but I love putting in the work.

The rigor of reading a good nonfiction book is like doing a hard workout. Takes a lot of energy. A lot of muscle work. A lot of concentration.

But after every workout must come proper nutrition. Just energy drinks and gym time won't work for too long. The body starves.

The mind is similar. It needs food. Not just some meal-prepped protein cooked in a big pot 5 days ago. Delicious hot food. Food made with care. Food you will remember next year even though you won't remember the workout of that day.

Fiction reading is like that food for me. It is the al pastor tacos after the gym. Homemade chicken curry with fresh rice and a bit of cilantro on top. A squeeze of lime.

I took a hard look at my wish list on bookshop.org -- all nonfiction: Fulfillment by Alec MacGillis, Life in Thought by Zena Hitz, Ultralearning by Scott Young, A bunch by Vaclav Smil…

I had to tip the scales -- to much gym, too few nourishing homemade meals…

To my cart I added several books by Ian McEwan. His writing is so precise! No waste. And he paints such a vivid picture with so few words.

I added Aimee Bender's The Color Master. I remember the Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake -- I had listened to the 9-odd hour audio book on my solo drive from Central Florida to the Smoky Mountains and it kept me wide awake!

I ordered a couple of Ursula Leguins. One day I will have read all her books and that will be a sad and happy day. Sad because she is gone and there is nothing new coming. But happy because I can start the journey through all her worlds all over again.

I am reading Richard Russo in the evenings while I plough through the tough Economics book from 1970 in the mornings. Russo's characters hopelessly stuck in a dead-end monopoly of Empire Falls adds color and emotion to the otherwise dry forces of market and government that Albert Hirschman describes in his economics book.

Somehow they compliment each other.

Like a good meal compliments working out at the gym.