How Reading Fiction Teaches You Social Science

You get to experience things firsthand.

I must admit — I was a book snob.

I rarely read fiction because I believed it couldn’t teach me anything. Fiction was strictly for leisure.

When I wanted to understand something, I read non-fiction to learn whatever it was I wanted to learn.

Well, that approach to learning is wrong because reading fiction can teach you a lot.

For example, in the novel Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane, you learn a lot about the relationships between communities and the race relations in Boston in the ’80s. You also learn how this one working class community talks, behaves, thinks, and deals with problems.

I learned a lot of sociology from this novel and I found it down in the crime thriller section.

Another novel that has a lot of social science in it is Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

I am currently a little past the halfway mark in this book, but I have learned so much about class warfare, psychology, politics, and the game of power as the characters try to get the upper hand to win a game.

You learn about politics in-action, and this novel can be found in the sci-fi section.

Reading fiction is a great way to learn the social sciences because it doesn’t just give you the theories and concepts, and their historical context.

Fiction shows you how the theory or concept is implemented and how it affects the recipient. It helps you feel what the characters feel.

Additionally, you can understand historical events better with fiction because it takes you to that point in time.

You experience the experiences of people from that time or event in first-person as you read the book.

And that’s how reading fiction can teach you the social sciences.

If you want to learn the core concepts of sociology, you can click here to check out my eBook SOCI 001 at my store.

Or you can check it out on Amazon here.