A Love of Reading….or Not

I have never really liked fiction.  Ever.

I remember being in 2nd and 3rd grades, being shooed into the fiction section of our school library to pick out books.  At one point my teacher even required that I take out at least one book because my preference was to simply sit down and wait for everyone else to be finished so we could go already.  Never once did anyone suggest I try non-fiction.  It was a small, quarantined section that no one ever wandered into unless you had to do a report.  Kids like fiction.

Even in high school fiction titles abound.  We read tons of fiction as a class.  I hated it.  We were required to read books from the teacher’s library – all fiction.  It was torture for me.  The teachers simply didn’t understand that it wasn’t a matter of being lazy.  I enjoyed reading…. just not reading fiction. But that wasn’t the case with any other kids I knew so I guess I can’t blame the teachers for not believing me.

So now here I am.  A homeschooling mom who desires to pass along a love of reading good literature to my kids….a love I don’t have.  I’ll sometimes read fiction titles with the girls but more often when I read to them, it’s non-fiction because that’s what I enjoy.  The girls seem much more ‘normal’ than I and choose to read fiction on a regular basis.  While I’m pleased with that, I can’t shake the guilt that I’m not being a good enough example for them by reading fiction myself.

So what do you think?  Is reading non-fiction a good enough ‘example’?  Do I need to read more fiction to them, even if it’s not something I enjoy?  How important do you think fiction literature is for a well balanced education and how is it best delivered?