A few months ago I joined (sort of started?) a book club. We meet once a month. Every time we decide on the next meeting time, I set a calendar reminder for a week before, so I have time to read the book. Except that isn’t enough time to read the book, so I end up reading a lot more during that week than I usually do.

Last night, my reminder went off, and I started reading the book for next week. While I was reading, I couldn’t help but think that the book didn’t seem real. The book is about a sociology student who spends ten years hanging out with a high-ish level gang member from the projects in Chicago. The whole time I was reading last night, I got the impression that the book seemed EXACTLY like you would expect a tv show or movie or fiction book about the same subject to be. As though, if the story wasn’t completely made up, it was at least heavily embellished to make it a better story.

On my way home tonight, a thought occurred to me: I have been exclusively reading fiction at night for months. I still think the book seems too good to be true, or hyper-real (I’m not really sure how to describe it), but I don’t know if it’s the book, or if my brain is doing some sort of weird Pavlovian thing where anything I read at night my brain interprets as fiction.

Weird, huh?

I don’t really have any answers, I just thought it was interesting.

I’ll tell you this, though: I won’t be reading Lovecraft again where and when I usually read NON-fiction. o.O