alias_sqbr

Well, I definitely get interested in subjects such as history or a branch of X other discipline because of books, but I think novelists--well, the aim is usually to write a good story. To give plausibility, not truth; to be entertaining, not to hold completely true to what's happened (in the case of historical fiction). Sometimes you twist things to make the story better, and I accept that as a reader: I'm in it for the interestingness! So I doubt a little, even when authors do a lot of research, and anyway I'd rather do my own historiography than rely on one person's synthesis. (Suppose you only knew medieval Europe from Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire *shudder* In the arena of fiction, I would jump at the chance to read a novel set in his version of Frankia, but no way would I uncritically swallow what he said regarding history.) Fundamentally I think that many concepts are too complex to be easily condensed into soundbites, and I think that translates to my inability to believe fiction like that. There's always more complexity, but a book has to end somewhere and be entertaining somehow. If that makes any sense. I think that novels and research try for two different things, and neither are better or worse, only different.

o/ Chalk me up as one! According to Wikipedia genre fiction doesn't cover historical fiction (huh, I wonder why? Historical accident, or a deliberate choice?) but it's all the same vein for me: "not mundane". Mundanity is the one thing that truly does nothing for me ;)