The title of this post itself invokes the feeling I’m currently sitting within.

My goal for 2025 is to read ten pages of a book per day. I used to be quite a prolific reader, but over the past few years, I’m barely managing to read ten books a year. I am hoping to change that in 2025, and so far, my modest goal has paid dividends. I have read far more than ten pages a day on most days, and I am back into the habit of reading.

Atomic Habits, which I read last year, underscored the importance of putting triggers for your goals in your everyday spaces. So, I purposefully leave the physical book I am reading in plain sight in the living room. Usually, instead of grabbing my phone to scroll mindlessly, I’ll see the book, remember my goal, and put the BlueSky time into reading a book instead. A much more productive use of my time.

So it is, this year, I’ve begun the habit by reading two books: Son of a Witch (book two of the Wicked series) by Gregory Maguire and The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates–the former rich fiction and the latter the opposite but concerning itself with some political fictions.

The juxtaposition of reading these two books simultaneously (I read different things in different contexts in different mediums–Witch is a physical book I wind down with at night and Message is an audiobook I have in my ear as I am exercising or commuting) has conjured reflections on the nature of fiction.

We live in an era, and perhaps have always lived in an era, of political fiction. Coates’ book grapples with this, especially in his third and final chapter about Israel and Palestine. To sum up the vibe, he remarks about a Museum of Tolerance located in Jerusalem (a museum whose branch I have visited in LA many times and educates people on the Holocaust, how it can happen, and how it should never happen again) built on the site of a large Muslim graveyard created because of the slaughter Israel brought to that site in the late 1940s.

So we have on one hand the incredibly important story of the Holocaust, its victims, and its cautionary tale and on the other hand the face that that museum stands where it does because Israel committed acts of racialized murder on the Arabs who once occupied the land. The dichotomy is striking but, sadly, not unique.

As Message points out, American Democracy would have been impossible without early settlers’ slaughter of Native Americans. We’ve built a story of American Democracy, a supposed system of equality for all, on the site of history where the lie is exposed–genocide and slavery chief among the telltale signs we find in the ashy foundation.

And, of course, moving into the 47th presidential administration of the United States, a continuation of the 45th administration, we are viewing another type of fiction, another type of gaslighting, another type of propaganda. Which isn’t to say that the 46th presidential administration didn’t have its own–it continued to fund slaughter in Palestine while seeking to uphold shining, democratic, and American values at home and abroad.

Looking out at the world, at its history, at the stories we tell about ourselves and each other, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. Truth from untruth.

Which leads me back to the title of this post and the goals I have for reading this year. Is fiction reading valuable in a time when, in reality, we have so much real-world fiction? Is it more important, now, to hear and tell true stories from lived experiences? Does a real recounting of the past have more value in a time when politicians, dictators, social media users, and think tanks distort truth to gain power and resources or less? Is truth-telling the ultimate form of resistance against fascism, and if so, is the reading of fiction more or less relevant? Does reading a fictional story like Son of a Witch instead of non-fiction mean I am spending my time well? Does reading non-fiction like The Message instead of fiction that can tell me something meaningful about the human condition mean I am spending my time well?

These are questions I do not have answers to, but they are questions I am turning over in my mind today.