One of my goals this year was to broaden my reading a bit. My goal for the Nonfiction Reading Challenge hosted at Doing Dewey was 6 nonfiction books, preferably in different categories. I ended up reading 12 and although some were similar to each other, overall I’m pleased with the variety. Thanks, Katie, so much for hosting!
- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder (Politics)
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yon (Science)
- Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmier (Politics)
- The Innocents Abroad: Or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress by Mark Twain (Classic; Travel)
- I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (True Crime)
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson (Self-help)
- A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa (Memoir)
- The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan (Science)
- American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson (Biography)
- The Lady in the Cellar: Murder, Scandal and Insanity in Victorian Bloomsbury by Sinclair McKay (True Crime)
- Not Your White Jesus by Sheri Faye Rosendahl (Religion)
- The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s a Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford (Biography)
I really enjoyed most of them. My favorites might have been I’ll Be Gone in the Dark because it was so gripping; The Death and Life of the Great Lakes because we live in Ohio and I spent some time at Lake Erie this past summer so I connected to it more than I would most science books; and American Eden because Hosack was an interesting man, but also I found all the other details about the time period and the people who intersected with his life fascinating. I was a bit disappointed in On Tyranny and Dear Madam President because they were so biased and had too little substance.
Way to go! I’ve gotten into nonfiction a lot more these days.
I’ve never been a big non-fiction reader, but my mom definitely is. I am happy I read more nonfiction this year. I’m not sure how much I learned that I’ll remember though.
Wow! I tell myself I hate nonfiction but I never give it a chance! My bad…
Or maybe you just don’t like nonfiction. I’m never one to advocate reading things you don’t want to – unless you’re in school.
I don’t like nonfiction. That’s probably the key to why I don’t read it.