Post #5 Non-Fiction

In my mind for a book to be considered non-fiction it has to be completely true, and be the author's true reality. Exaggerating to the point of a lie is not acceptable in a non-fiction book. If there is a made up aspect in a so called "non-fiction" piece then it is fiction. Half- truths are ok in fiction definitely, but not in non-fiction. When these lies are written into what people think is real the author is betraying all of his readers, and fans. People read non-fiction because they want the truth; they want to read about real life events, and the reality of today. If they didn't want the truth and just some made up story they would read fiction, that's why we have two main categories for books, fiction and nonfiction. These half-truths are creating a weird sub-genre. You either go all into reality or go all into fiction, there really shouldn't be an other option. One book that is acceptable though, in my mind, is The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. It is a fictional story, but pieces of his wife's parents relationship is seen all through out the book, and he got the idea from their marriage and background story. He doesn't go saying it's non-fiction though. He made some stuff up to make the book worth reading, which is perfectly acceptable because of the fact he classify's his book as fiction. I do think we need lines between genres. Even though a book is a book, it helps us classify and organize books in a way that's manageable. Imagine if you walked into a bookstore and their was no organization, no such thing as genre sections, nothing would ever get done. Lets say you wanted to find a romance book, but there are no genres and the workers have no idea what you are talking about. You wouldn't be able to tell books from one another, they would all just simply be books. Not a teen novel or a mystery novel, just simply a book. No book would really stand out as special and there would be no way to really compare books effectively. Genres should be used to categorize books, and fiction and non-fiction need to stay two separate genres for the separation to mean anything at all.