Re-Discovering Fiction Reading

As a kid, one of the things I used to love doing in school was visiting the school library. And I did that for two reasons. One was using the computer to play games during recess, and the other was to find interesting books to read. My earliest memories of books that I enjoyed were The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and The Spiderwick Chronicles, though I vaguely remember the content. What initially attracted me to them were the book covers. I was also a fan of reading manga back then, especially Dragon Ball and Naruto, as they were the only ones available in Danish at the time, alongside One Piece.

When I got older, my interest in reading fiction declined. And by the age of 13 or 14, I stopped altogether. Partially, I felt that reading in general was burdensome, and something I had to do because of a school assignment. So, at home was the only place I could avoid it. Also, I didn’t grow up with the habit of reading books at home, which made it easier to let it go.

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Then came my early adulthood, where I became interested in reading books again, mainly nonfiction, as I wanted to better myself and gain knowledge. It was a subtle transition. I’m a designer by profession. And when I was a new player in the field, my knowledge was limited. So I bought books to learn about design, branding, and creativity in general. That’s when I found out that reading became easier when I was passionate about something. It became enjoyable and natural, and didn’t feel like a mandatory assignment anymore.

It led to a ripple effect. One interest opened the doors to other interests. As I grew as a designer, I naturally wanted to learn more about other topics. My curiosity got the best of me. I broaden my knowledge in business, marketing, copywriting, and psychology. That made me want to learn about the world we live in, history, and different cultures.

Up until the year 2024, I read nothing but nonfiction. I was even in a phase where I would read a lot of self-help books, but I eventually got tired of them. I felt most of them were meaningless, and many of the authors were just telling me, “Do X, and it will help you with Y.” And not that there’s something wrong with it, but reading much of the same stuff over and over again becomes repetitive and uninteresting.

I needed something new and refreshing. In the back of my mind, I have always wanted to return to reading fiction. But somehow, I felt an invincible barrier that completely prevented me from getting there. I assumed over the years that fiction books were a waste of time. That, if I couldn’t extract things to apply in my own life, then why should I be bothered? I rode with the self-help book mentality.

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But two things happened that changed me and made me take the final leap. One of them was listening to a podcast about books, especially fiction books. It’s the Paper Trails podcast by Inspyre UK. It’s run by two good friends of mine. And as a Somali man, seeing other Somali men having a deep passion for storytelling and fiction reading was truly inspiring. It was the “Oh, there are others like me who like this stuff and are openly talking about it.”

The second catalyst that made me start reading was a book recommendation from a designer whose work I admire. I was unsure what to read first. So I thought it was easier to start with a book others enjoyed. The Circle by Dave Eggers, a dystopian novel, became my first entrance back into the realm of fiction in 2024. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the content in the book, but the themes were interesting enough to keep me engaged. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig became my second book of the same year. It was a short and sweet read, which suited what I needed at the time. It was all about getting into the habit. I also tried The Physician by Noah Gordon, but had to stop as I wasn’t ready for longer books just yet.

Now in 2026, I’ve read about 12 fiction books in total. Some are shorter while others are longer. It might not sound like a lot for the avid reader of fiction. But to me it is. I’m just happy that I went through it. I do believe now that nonfiction, especially the self-help section, could learn a lot from fiction in terms of story structure and how sentences are constructed. There’s more freedom with words and phrases in a fiction book.

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But I once read a book titled Scramble written by Marty Neumeier, who’s known for books on branding, design thinking, and innovation. In Scramble, he presents his ideas on agile strategy as a thriller story with fictional characters. I finished that one pretty quickly because I couldn’t let it go. Maybe the future of nonfiction books should tell a story to present their ideas instead of just telling the reader what to do.

The great things about reading fiction are that you can almost always extract the same lessons you’d have found in a self-help book, just done more subtly and engagingly. I read a book called Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It’s a novel series in which the main theme that runs through them all is the idea that even though we can’t change the past or the future, we can still change how we feel about something in the present. So, characters in the books are carrying heavy regrets, and want to go back in time (or future) to gain clarity or closure to someone dear to them that they have lost, either to an accident, murder, or illness.

In one of the stories, a husband had signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and started to forget a lot of things, including that he had a wife who was a nurse and took care of him out of obligation. Before he lost his memories completely, he wanted to give her a letter in the past, but wasn’t able to. It didn’t make sense to his wife, as she knew he wasn’t good at reading and writing. She went back in time to meet her husband before the illness took hold of him. To her surprise, she found out that he had written the letter before he lost his memories. She thought that the letter was about his illness, but in reality, it was an emotional letter about how he wanted her to stay as his wife, even though he had forgotten about her. He was always worried about that part, and that made her wail. Her present didn’t change. But what changed was her heart. Her attitude towards her husband changed. And she no longer took care of him out of obligation, but out of love.

The title of the book series itself signals that time is a fleeting thing, waiting for no one. We can’t change the past, nor the future. We can only make use of the present moment. A self-help book would have just said to live in the present, cherish those around you, and find the courage to face your past self. But in fiction, it lets us experience those lessons through a character’s struggle and how they overcome it.

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As my fiction reading has increased over the years, my interest in nonfiction has decreased. Whenever I try to read one, I can’t stay engaged. It isn’t because I don’t find value in them. It might just have been a natural process of coming back to what I found joyful as a kid—to be immersed in a world and wander through my imagination. I don’t know how long I will be in this mode, but I intend to enjoy it as much as possible. Also, now that I have a dream and a goal to publish a novel of my own in the future, my reading is also very much analytical. Looking at sentences that I like and ideas from a book that could inspire my own. So there’s both an enjoyment component as well as a learning component to it.