ST Alpha - "What's the reason for it being in nonfiction? Is it actually a true story? -- nm" (Reading a Post)

SlickerTalk
Search Archives
The Leaderboard
The FAQ

Login
Create Account

Search Dr. S. Talk
TT/ST Wiki
How Well Do You Know ...

RSS Feed

Hosting by DigitalOcean

Support ST on Ko-Fi

Down to Post

Backboards:

Posts: 155

In response to "You might remember me worrying about whether we'd put the new Harry Potter in the nonfiction section with plays. Sure enough. A 327-page play in the " by mara

What's the reason for it being in nonfiction? Is it actually a true story? -- nm

Posted by Krusty (aka krustylu) Jul 29 '16, 14:40

(No message)

Responses:

No, it doesn't have to be true to be nonfiction. Nonfiction simply means it's not a novel or short story. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 14:41 19
- Really? My understanding was nonfiction is writing based on truth. -- nm - Krusty Jul 29, 14:45 17
  - Not necessarily. For instance, folklore, legends and myths can be cataloged as nonfiction. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 14:48 16
    - Plus stuff like ghost hunting, astrology, homeopathy, trickle-down economics... :-) In cases like that, of course, the author is *purporting* it to - mara Jul 29, 14:52 2
      - astrology is real, yo. -- nm - all the boys love venus in scorpio Jul 29, 16:44
      - That makes sense. -- nm - Krusty Jul 29, 15:03
    - I can see it in those cases because they're based on a perceived truth in the stories. - Krusty Jul 29, 14:52 12
      - It's totally made up, like most plays. But plays are not novels, so they're put in nonfiction. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 14:54 11
        
        That makes no sense to me. Plays are not really that different than a novel so why the difference? - Krusty Jul 29, 15:00 3
        
        See my last post below. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 15:10
        
        at my store we had ~80 sections - none were called "non-fiction" - mud Jul 29, 15:05 1
        
        Yeah, as much as anything else, libraries are just trying to come up with a single word to call the items with Dewey Decimal numbers. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 15:14
        
        Poetry, too. Edgar Allan Poe didn't actually meet a raven who said "Never more," but it's in nonfiction. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 14:56 6
        
        Wait, wut? -- nm - iSpam Jul 29, 15:09
        
        I feel like it should be on a case by case basis. -- nm - Krusty Jul 29, 15:02 4
        
        You know what, I should retract some of this. There's actually a much better way to think of this. The 2 categories of texts shouldn't be fiction and -- (edited) - mara Jul 29, 15:10 3
        
        Got it. I'm sorry for dragging this out but I was genuinely curious. Thanks for the detailed answer. -- nm - Krusty Jul 29, 15:16 2
        
        Heh, I was thinking of apologizing to ST, but *I'm* happy to talk about it. It's actually been helpful to me. -- nm - mara Jul 29, 15:17 1
        
        Cool. :-) -- (edited) - Krusty Jul 29, 15:24
- interesting. -- nm - Epiphany Jul 29, 14:44

Post a message top

Replies are disabled on threads older than 7 days.