COEUR d'ALENE - The first beer a young Jess Walter ever ordered was in a North Idaho bar, though he admits he might not exactly have been of drinking age yet.

The first book the now best-selling Spokane-based author and journalist ever wrote was about the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident in North Idaho. So, he felt plenty at home Thursday night as the guest speaker at the 2014 Northern Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture and Dinner.

A record 460 people attended the lecture and dinner at The Coeur d'Alene Resort, and Walter delivered with a speech that drew plenty of laughs and a standing ovation. But he had plenty of serious things to say, too.

"I'm here to ask you to stand up for the stuff we call literature, which is under endless assault by TV and Internet, by Fifty Shades of Vampires, by a culture that values entertainment above all," he told the audience.

He learned something important about writing while covering the famous Ruby Ridge standoff as a newspaper reporter and author. It drove home for him that complex stories are the one writers should always strive to write, even in a rushed world loaded with tweets, status updates, posts to Instagram and constantly streaming entertainment.

Reading fiction, he said, is one of the best things people can do for themselves, and the world.

"Books are not mirrors, books are windows; they look out on the world," Walter said. "Reading fiction connects us into a keen awareness, not of other people's opinions or their problems, but what it truly means to feel what they feel. Good writing literally creates empathy."

People are so besieged with information that they often choose to only let in the things they already believe, he said. On Facebook and other social media, people live in echo chambers with their "friends" who all think and believe the same things.

Americans are so divided now, and people are only making it worse by closing themselves off to opinions and beliefs which fall outside those they already hold.

People are not just disagreeing about social, religious and political issues, but about what is reality.

Novels, he said, open us back up, giving us a chance to see through other people's eyes.

"The best books show us the unfamiliar, and we grow as people by seeing beyond the borders of ourselves," Walter said.

• About Jess Walter

Loved book: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

On journalism: "My training as a journalist makes you want to look at the places people sometimes want to turn away from."

On Facebook: "How many times have you heard, 'Well I saw it on Facebook?' as proof of something. I'm just waiting until it becomes admissible in court."