I find I enjoy watching documentaries and reading technical/history/biography books often more than fiction. Because fiction is, ultimately, fake and manipulative.
1. The good guys win, the bad guys lose
2. Going along with (1) there's the morality message
3. The events in the book serve the purpose of the plot
4. Lots of books are formulaic, i.e. the author found a formula that sells.
5. There's got to be a beginning, middle, and end.
6. Many novels are written as a series of cliffhangers. Crichton would do that, as would the Outlander series, etc.
Real life is much more messy and unpredictable, hence more interesting.
Civil War heroes are goats today, even having their memorials removed.
Edison has gone from hero to goat. He'll be a hero again in a few decades.
It's the job of a professional historian to try and discern the truth from all this. But whatever truth there is in fiction is impossible to determine if you know nothing about history.
Fictional universes evolve into 'canon', where certain explanations are correct and others are dismissed. Star Trek, Star Wars, etc., famously have 'canon'. People get wrapped around the axle arguing canon. This is ridiculous, as it's all made up nonsense.
Another is "Reach for the Sky" by Bader. Chuck Yeager's biography is also a treat.
Then watch that absurd "Flyboys" Hollywood fiction. What a piece of trash in comparison.