non-fiction.

A non-fiction book needs to be 100% true. Dictionary.com defines non-fiction as, "the branch of literature comprising works of narrative prose dealing with or offering opinions or conjectures upon facts and reality, including biography, history, and the essay." You cannot just embellish facts to make the story more interesting because it is now creative and fiction work; made up.
Then I was wondering: is a memoir nonfiction? or is it allowed to be flawed?
Barbara Doyen stated, "memories are faulty, so a little leeway is given to authors of memoirs, but they are expected to be honest and to check their facts for accuracy. Creating fiction and passing it off as nonfiction, as apparently was done by James Frey in his controversial A Million Little Pieces, is completely unacceptable."
So a memoir is supposed to be all facts, but a couple of slip ups, say recalling a conversation from when you were six, is okay. I just think that if you don't know all the information, why put it in a book and sell it as the true story of you?
I love non-fiction. I recently read the book Moonwalking With Einstein, which is a non-fiction account of the author, Joshua Foer, going to a memory championship. It included cited facts from other memory books, and Foer also talks about bringing a recorder with him, so you know that the conversations are true. There is nothing made up in that book, therefore it is non-fiction.
If you need half-truths to sell your life story, maybe it shouldn't be written down.
And we do need to label our books between fiction and non-fiction. No one would be able to trust any book on factual information if they don't know if it is fiction or not. There are so many books out there; we need categories to place them in.
If we couldn't label our encyclopedias as non-fiction (100% true), we couldn't use them to prove a point, because someone could have gone in there and changed definition because that's how they felt it should be. WE NEED FACTS.

the importance of literary books.

I understand why people do not like any reading assignments in English class. Everyone feels that there is not enough time to get any of the reading done, let alone all the worksheets involved. But I think it is very important to have the literary books. I may be biased to the masses, I love reading literary books in my spare time, but I don't think that Macbeth can be simply replaced by Twilight.
Then you can get into how difficult Shakespeare is to read, and that nothing he says is relevant anymore, and that trying to translate his meanings are a waste of time. I don't find that true. Shakespeare is difficult, but I think that people need to see just how revolutionary he was. He invented so many common words we use today and is able to take us on journeys through live, love, and tragedy. I think we need to keep Shakespeare.
But enough about that. I think that students are not very accepting of the literary classics because they can't fully process all the intricate parts of the book. My friends often complain about how they don't have the time to read two chapters of The Great Gatsby, and even if they did, they wouldn't know what to highlight or what the importance of the color of Daisy's dress is. I think we need awesome English teachers. I was not always a fan of the classics, or reading any English book in general. I did not finish an English book until this year, my junior year. I think that my English teacher was able to help me appreciate the value of the literary classics, and that the authors do mean each and every word they say. I don't think you can find that in genre fiction. Or at least I don't see it in the same light. I think that anyone who loves to write can become a genre fiction author, but not everyone can become a literary classic author. It's a dying skill.
Do we even have classic authors in our lives today? We read books from centuries ago, and no books from today. I think the youngest of the classics we read in school are from the 50's (taking a guess here, I think that is around the time The Catcher in the Rye was written). I think there is a reason we don't read the books of today in English class. I find so many of the genre fiction to be the same. But there are no other books that compare to To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Macbeth, Fahrenheit 451, and Catcher in the Rye. They are unique and perfectly written. I think these novels need to be taught in English class, with a great teacher, and maybe more people can see the true art behind the classic literary books.