I’m never ashamed of reading fiction, and I read a lot of it, usually multiple times – everything from detective stories,  myths and legends, 18th-century epistolary novels to sci-fi and historical romances, with children’s fiction and classics along the way.

Fiction teaches me at least as much, if not more than non-fiction.

I put myself in another’s shoes, see things from multiple perspectives, hear the same things said in a plethora of different ways, experience new and different worlds I’d never encounter in real life.

Non-fiction is great, I love the new information and ideas it gives me, the different ways of interpreting how the world works.

But it’s fiction that gets me practicing the empathy and imagination I need to apply my information and ideas wisely and humanely.   Almost withour realising it, because I’m having so much fun.

I’ll never be ashamed of reading fiction.

Long may I be able to do so.