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Why I'm giving non-fiction a chance

I just couldn't remember in school which artefact belonged to which historic site or even the difference between the two.

I taught myself a lesson recently. Or, let's be less arrogant: I was recently taught a lesson - and some mini lessons. Like 1. Be discerning yet open to recommendations. This I knew. 2. Read more non-fiction. This, also, of course, I knew. I practise neither.
In the past fortnight, I finally read the author Yuval Noah Harari. He came so highly recommended to me by a family member that I got right into it. I thought Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind  would be an intimidating read. With a name that covers such a broad scope, I imagined, this is not for me. Barack Obama and Bill Gates said great things about Sapiens, but who listens? It's not like I didn't know the book existed. Since 2015, it's been prominently displayed in bookstores, at airports but I felt no inclination to pick it up, sadly. And I'll be damned if I let airport bookshops tell me what to read (mini lesson: ease up on the arrogance).
And then, on a recent Friday, I got into Sapiens, and basically munched on it all of last week. I put it down thinking, why couldn't those wretched history textbooks in school have been similarly engaging? But no, we had to spend precious years mugging up which wobbly mud jug - sorry, artefact - from the Indus valley Civilisation was found where. And Harappa, my nemesis.
I just couldn't remember in school which artefact belonged to which historic site or even the difference between the two. It was always 'historic site'. I blame those textbooks for making me indifferent to history and shutting off the part of my brain that might be interested. Dull learning will stub out any curiosity a child might have to know more. Kill that hunger and you produce arrogant dodos. And then, there are people like Harari who when you come across you think, where have you been? Why couldn't you have written my grade eight syllabus? How lucky is the department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he is a tenured professor.
I feel I should have decades ago known the stuff he writes about. This is why I, and I suppose 'we', should read more non-fiction.
Sapiens highlighted one interesting nugget after another. I didn't know that for many years aluminum cost more than gold. Harari adds life to that fact by including stories. He says, in the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon the third of France laid out aluminum cutlery for his most esteemed dinner guests. Less important people had to contend with eating with forks and knives made of gold. I'll never forget this now.
Similarly, I didn't know that the English at one point ate no sugar; that the intake of the Englishman rose from close to nothing in the early 17th Century to about eight kg in the early 19th Century. It has everything to do with sugarcane trade. This was followed by a bit on cakes and pastries and more good reading. Harari was my hero of the week, the year. He surmises about happiness: "So perhaps happiness is synchronising one's personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions".
In a bit about natural selection, he mentions Eduardo Kac, a Brazilian bio-artist who decided in 2000 to create a new work of art: "a fluorescent green rabbit". It was born. It was named Alba.
All this I picked up from this book. People will be put off reading about the goings-on in the dairy and meat industries. That bit about commercial hatcheries? Cold-hearted to not turn vegetarian after you've absorbed that. I plan to read it out aloud at a dinner party where all my guests will eat with steel cutlery.
He talks of how language evolved as a way of gossiping. He writes on evolution and what's biological and what we made up in stories and called it culture. In one of my favourite sections, he talks about people's life choices in finding partners: "Whatever is possible is by definition also natural."
If I think about my reading taste, non-fiction gets a short shrift. There's enough pretentious literature and 'auto-fiction' on my shelves. But Being Mortal by Atul Gawande might have been the last non-fiction book I read, and that was last year (!). I am vigilant about not reading (what I think is) rubbish, so I do my homework before picking up a book. Word of mouth - from the mouths of people whose recos I trust - but if I'm being honest, I know the gap between intention and actualisation and I'm thinking of fixing it.
-nivriti@khaleejtimes.com