I've been taking a lot more time for myself recently. Basically, I just take a few hours of "quiet time" every day where I don't have any deadlines and don't HAVE to get anything done.  During this time, I've been reading books.

My best buddy Jeremy Tolbert gave me a few boxes of fiction books and graphic novels when he moved, so I've been trying to go through them.  As I read a book, I decide whether I'm going to keep the book or pass it along to someone else (thus perpetuating the cycle Jeremy started by giving me the books, which I think he'd actually be happy to hear).

I haven't decided to keep a single one.

Granted, Jeremy gave me books that he decided not to keep, I didn't expect any of them to be groundbreaking or anything.  I mean, a reader of his caliber is likely to have lots of cruft in his library, and he was pretty clear in his warning when he dropped them off that there was some weird stuff in there.

I suspect it's more that the fiction I read needs to "get" me, or something really stupid like that.  I can count on one hand the number of fiction books that I thought were most excellent.  Only one of those is one that I would read again (that book is "Ender's Game", we own multiple copies of it, and if I have male progeny, it's likely that he'll be named Ender).  I sometimes have to slog through reading fiction even when I'm not interesting, and that feels unfair.

If I didn't make a concerted effort, I'd only ever read non-fiction.  When I read fiction, I don't (generally) have a life changing experience.  I also really find non-fiction to be absolutely fascinating.  They often tell of events that actually happened, present facts from an angle I had never considered, or teach me how to do something I'd never done before.

In the last year reading non-fiction, I've read about the environmental impact of selling water rights, an anthropological study of the Jews in ~1000 B.C. - 0 A.D., how large businesses are managed and how they make choices, and the economics of prisons and criminal organizations. You might find fiction books that could teach you the same things, but at that point, what's the point?

I will say, however, that fiction books that do provide life-changing experiences for me tend to make that list of fiction books I call "most excellent".  It's possible that, while those experiences are rare, they are worth reading lots of duds on the way.