Personally I’ve found very few nonfiction books which helped me improve and educate myself more than the fiction (almost 80% of my reading list).
Sometimes it just seems there’s a forcefully acquired obsession with nonfiction reading and the misplaced sense of intellectual accomplishment attached (I’d not call it pseudo intellectualism).
I often compare it, in crude ways, with how one picks up smoking in school/college just because the “cool kids” do it too. But then that’s more to fit in I guess, or to fulfil a need to belong.
I was surprised to find friends move quickly from normal (for the lack of proper word) to “need a cig to think” or “.. do X”. Similarly “dude, this [a nonfiction book] got ‘depth’” followed by a couple of “you know”s and subtly accusing fiction of being mere entertainment.
PS. I’d love to know whether there’s been work done on relating preference of self help books with isolation, loneliness, being introverted, reclusiveness, lack of knowledge of a broader spectrum of issues (or exposure to a diverse social circle, if any at all) but having developed a very sharp analytical and logical thunks in a very narrow manner (usually the related STEM field) and tendency to just fit in everything in those “formulas” etc. I have noticed a lot of these in myself and also observed them dramatically change as my surroundings and circle changed.