This has been such a fun month of reading posts about nonfiction and subsequently adding a ton of books to my own TBR.

 

Week 5: (Nov. 26 to 30) – New to My TBR (Katie @ Doing Dewey): It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book!

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I commented on so many blogs this month, which is what made taking part in Nonfiction November so rewarding. That said, I did not do a great job of noting which books I added to my TBR from which posts. Consider this round-up of books I discovered this month attributed to any and every one of you who mentioned them and piqued my interest.

In no particular order, with descriptions from Goodreads, here’s what I popped on my TBR!

 

Print Nonfiction TBR Adds

Heating Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys.

Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.

 

 

 

Create More Flow: Igniting Peak Performance in an Overwired World by Camille Preston

In today’s overwired world, we are expected to be always on and always connected, but this approach has consequences. Workplace engagement is at an all-time low and complaints about work-life balance are at an all-time high. In the quest to optimize while restoring balance, more people than ever before are now embracing flow.

When we are in flow, we are in the zone. When we are in flow, we are more creative and more productive. But flow isn’t just about unlocking engagement and impact in the workplace. Flow rests on our ability to take care of our bodies, wellness, and work-life balance. Create More Flow introduces the concept of flow, offers compelling evidence for its impact, and provides actionable strategies to start experiencing more flow more often. This is a must-read book for anyone who craves more joy in their work and life.

 

 

I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Supreme Empathy by Cris Beam

Every generation, a phrase enters our consciousness. In the sixties it was civil rights; in the eighties, it was self-esteem; now our word is empathy.

But what actually is empathy? Is it just one thing? Is it inherited? Can it be taught? Is ‘corporate empathy’ an oxymoron? And is empathy always a desirable human value?

Cris Beam tackles these questions and more as she journeys from neuroscience labs, to classrooms; from a reconciliation program in the US, to South Africa, where the first children born since Apartheid are coming of age. She talks to scientists studying mirror neurons and to teachers helping children identify emotions, to victims of childhood abuse, and to those attempting the most difficult empathy of all: empathy for the genocidal state. Along the way, she examines her own past and family relationships, and discovers what it means to ‘feel you’ — and how we can all apply empathy to our complex lives.

 

The Book of Essie by Meghan MacLean Weir (I know it’s fiction! But I added a fiction title this month, too!)

Esther Ann Hicks–Essie–is the youngest child on Six for Hicks,a reality television phenomenon. She’s grown up in the spotlight, both idolized and despised for her family’s fire-and-brimstone brand of faith. When Essie’s mother, Celia, discovers that Essie is pregnant, she arranges an emergency meeting with the show’s producers: Do they sneak Essie out of the country for an abortion? Do they pass the child off as Celia’s? Or do they try to arrange a marriage–and a ratings-blockbuster wedding? Meanwhile, Essie is quietly pairing herself up with Roarke Richards, a senior at her school with a secret of his own to protect. As the newly formed couple attempt to sell their fabricated love story to the media–through exclusive interviews with an infamously conservative reporter named Liberty Bell–Essie finds she has questions of her own: What was the real reason for her older sister leaving home? Who can she trust with the truth about her family? And how much is she willing to sacrifice to win her own freedom?

 

 

Audiobook Nonfiction TBR Adds

Shift Happens: Breakdowns During Life’s Long Hauls by Margot Ganger

Out of desperation to escape the confines of her small, northern California town, in 1979, Genger breaks every rule of her social class, gender, and upbringing to become a long-haul truck driver. Shift Happens, is a twenty-first Century incarnation of the classic voyage to find one’s self, and one’s homeland. By facing her mental health and addiction demons, at the age of 28, she sees her role as a young woman flip-flop from cheerleader, girl friend, young wife, sex-symbol to a strong, self-determined individual who knows what she wants and how to succeed.

Along the way, Margot discovers the many facets of America—its beauty and its meanness—and eventually realizes what she values in ‘home.’ Ms. Genger’s gift of description paints the majesty of the beaches, mountains, meadows, and skyscapes of the countryside, and captures the colors and grit of our cities, truck stops, and underground lives of long-haul truck drivers.

Shift Happens will make you laugh, cringe, and celebrate as you meet Margot’s driving partners, Southerners, Yankees, East Coast, West Coast, and Middle Americans of all stripes and colors as she delivers everything from Hustler Magazines to Washington State apples.

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber

Barber explores the evolution of American food from the ‘first plate,’ or industrially-produced, meat-heavy dishes, to the ‘second plate’ of grass-fed meat and organic greens, and says that both of these approaches are ultimately neither sustainable nor healthy. Instead, Barber proposes Americans should move to the ‘third plate,’ a cuisine rooted in seasonal productivity, natural livestock rhythms, whole-grains, and small portions of free-range meat.

 

 

 

 

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom

We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion.

Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral.

Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

Dopesick by Beth Macy

Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of America’s twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction. From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs; from disparate cities to once-idyllic farm towns; it’s a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched.

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother’s question-why her only son died-and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same distressed communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death.

Through unsparing, yet deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows, astonishingly, that the only thing that unites Americans across geographic and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But in a country unable to provide basic healthcare for all, Macy still finds reason to hope-and signs of the spirit and tenacity necessary in those facing addiction to build a better future for themselves and their families.

American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System by E. Fuller Torrey

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered an historic speech on mental illness and retardation. He described sweeping new programs to replace “the shabby treatment of the many millions of the mentally disabled in custodial institutions” with treatment in community mental health centers. This movement, later referred to as “deinstitutionalization,” continues to impact mental health care. Though he never publicly acknowledged it, the program was a tribute to Kennedy’s sister Rosemary, who was born mildly retarded and developed a schizophrenia-like illness. Terrified she’d become pregnant, Joseph Kennedy arranged for his daughter to receive a lobotomy, which was a disaster and left her severely retarded.

Fifty years after Kennedy’s speech, E. Fuller Torrey’s book provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public. Torrey examines the Kennedys’ involvement in the policy, the role of major players, the responsibility of the state versus the federal government in caring for the mentally ill, the political maneuverings required to pass the legislation, and how closing institutions resulted not in better care – as was the aim – but in underfunded programs, neglect, and higher rates of community violence. Many now wonder why public mental illness services are so ineffective. At least one-third of the homeless are seriously mentally ill, jails and prisons are grossly overcrowded, largely because the seriously mentally ill constitute 20 percent of prisoners, and public facilities are overrun by untreated individuals. As Torrey argues, it is imperative to understand how we got here in order to move forward towards providing better care for the most vulnerable.

 

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.

Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus’s landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.

In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:

In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
Certain cities–such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital–were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as “man’s first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering.”
Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it–a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively “landscaped” by human beings.

Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.

Waking up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving

Waking Up White is the book Irving wishes someone had handed her decades ago. By sharing her sometimes cringe-worthy struggle to understand racism and racial tensions, she offers a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, manners, and tolerance. As Irving unpacks her own long-held beliefs about colorblindness, being a good person, and wanting to help people of color, she reveals how each of these well-intentioned mindsets actually perpetuated her ill-conceived ideas about race. She also explains why and how she’s changed the way she talks about racism, works in racially mixed groups, and understands the antiracism movement as a whole.

 

 

 

 

 

Nonfiction Read In November

And just for fun, here’s a look at the nonfiction books I read this month (& the one that I’m just about done with!).

 

Becoming by Michelle Obama (audio)

Currently reading and LOVING. I love that Michelle reads the audio.

 

The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and The Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy by Paige Williams

At times, the history of both fossil trade and Mongolia get a little overwhelming to the otherwise immersive narrative, but a really fascinating book about commercial fossil hunting and selling. Like THE FEATHER THIEF, but with dinosaur fossils. It’s a bloodless crime, and it’s a really fascinating crime in that I’m not entirely sure what Prokopi was really imprisoned for (it’s a lot of legal hopscotching, given that it’s an issue of international law, of laws not entirely codified, and of an area of legal weakness, not to mention that some of the things he did were because of someone else who suddenly died in the middle of everything which is rather inconvenient).

The book looks deceptively longer than it is. Over half of the book is research notes. Williams did her work here, and I loved it deeply. Nonviolent true crime within niche industries is a thing I am finding myself loving more and more.

 

 

Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss

This was just fun. Thoughtful reading on nostalgic teen and tween book series from the 80s and 90s, peppered with interviews and insights into the trends and themes of these ubiquitous books. I extra appreciated that Moss highlighted how white and upper class these titles were, while also including the few inclusive titles that did exist (and I’m FASCINATED by Marie G. Lee’s name change to make her less Asian-sounding as an author but she was the first Asian American author to write an Asian American protagonist to be published by a major publisher…racism in the industry has only moved so far).

It’s like reading your favorite blog of pop culture and book history, with an appealing format that makes it easy to devour. I only wish more resources had been included.

 

Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister

A spot-on approach to why women are so angry in today’s western culture. Traister is great at being intersectional and delineating white women’s experiences and alignment with a patriarchal system that can benefit them vs. the anger women of color feel both at the patriarchy and at white women benefitting from it.

This book was written and published quickly — Traister even notes that in her conclusion — but damn if it had waited until after the midterms because it would have added a whole other level of insight, especially relating to women succeeding in their bids for public office.

That all said, it didn’t impact me the way many others were impacted. Maybe because none of it is especially new or especially stirring, as someone who has been in the thick of thinking about and acting on anger for a long, long time. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t good because it was, but rather, it’s possible none of this is surprising or enlightening, even if accurate.

 

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty (audio)

A recommendation from a Book Riot pal and it was a good one! Twitty is black, queer, and Jewish, and he’s also a culinary historian with a research and personal interest in the history of food and meals in the south. Twitty narrates, making this more enjoyable to listen to for me than I suspect it would have been reading. It’s technical at times and very rooted in research; even when we learn about Twitty’s own personal history, it’s quite removed and impersonal, which is done purposefully to make a point about the removal of black Americans from their own history. That removal, though, means there’s no coming up for air. Aurally, that works well.

If food history is of interest and especially black food history in the US, this is a must-read.

 

 

 

Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

One of the things Hollis notes is that you pick and choose what you take away from any media you consume. From any conversation you have. I operate under this philosophy and have since it was really introduced to me in yoga teacher training; I’d always been under the assumption if someone is teaching you anything, you should want to take as much away from it as you can. This isn’t realistic and it’s not true to your own development. What you leave is as important as what you take.

There’s a lot in here I really liked. You have to take responsibility for your own life is something that’s been drilled into me since middle school. I had a teacher in 6th grade who read Jorge Luis Borges’s “You Learn” to us, and the idea of watering your own garden, rather than waiting for someone else to bring you flowers, has always, always stuck with me. So that Hollis doesn’t coddle and doesn’t especially cheerlead, is a really refreshing aspect of the book. You are in control of your own life.

The other thing I liked was this: it’s a book with a Christian bent to it, but it’s a book that accepts every type of faith or belief system. Hollis takes a liberal view of religion in a way that is encouraging and encompassing to all, including those who are atheist (like me!). But she doesn’t just do that. She uses her faith as a means of waking up those who use their faith as a crutch to be or to do things that aren’t kind or respectful. The chapter about there being no one right way to be is a particularly good one — she acknowledges her privilege and asks others to do the same. Does it go especially deep? Nah. But this isn’t a book about going deep to become an enlightened and better white person. However, the fact it’s in there at all is noteworthy. It’ll stop a lot of readers in their tracks and consider this very thing.

I also appreciate how much she talks about therapy and getting help.

That said, she’s drank the diet culture cocktail and hasn’t yet figured out how to remove that set of judgements — something she says she tries not to do, judge — from her own life. She isn’t especially shaming of fat people, as weight, she notes, doesn’t determine your health. But, she regularly refers to overweight people in negative lights without offering the same sort of perspective she does in other situations (the harried mother on the plane, the addict whose child is in foster care: the grace she offers them isn’t offered to bodies that are bigger or unhealthy or anything outside of the same media-ideal that she rails against everywhere else). I hope as she grows in her own practices and choices, she wakes up to this part and can reframe these ideas.

If you go in knowing some pieces will really resonate and others will contradict or be unpalatable to you, then you’ll get a lot out of this. Hollis isn’t your mother or your guru. She’s offering what she knows, how she learned, and wants you to do the work yourself for what you want out of your life.

For skeptical readers, I’d suggest what I did: I listened to some of the podcasts before picking up the book to see if they felt okay for proceeding. They did, and thus, I took away more than I was frustrated by here.

(Yes, I’ve read the BuzzFeed article and…it actually gets some things incorrect about the book itself. A lot of that particular piece felt unnecessarily mean spirited toward a woman who runs a successful business catered to middle class white ladies — you could leverage those same accusations against anyone who is a “self help” personality. There are a lot of things to dislike about Hollis’s work but you also need to take the criticisms with the same grain of salt).

 

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (audio)

I needed some of Anthony’s acerbic wit in my ears. The audiobook, about his adventures in the culinary world, is read by him and a total treat. The production is definitely lacking (the cuts and jumps are not graceful) but if you’re missing Tony, it’s absolutely worth a visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slow: Simply Living for a Frantic World by Brooke McAlary

I appreciate how McAlary emphasizes that slow living isn’t about minimalism and that much of what we see about minimalism is exactly the problem: it’s keeping up with a perception of what we think we should be. Nothing groundbreaking here, but still a nice book to remind you about unplugging, about the power of breathing, and about finding what matters to you and focusing on those things while ignoring the rest. I’d put this on a shelf with BRAIDING SWEETGRASS and THE YEAR OF LESS, both of which have done some mentality-shifting for me. Not so much about stuff but about time and energy.

I did enjoy that there were no prescriptions or “here’s how I did it” lessons here. It’s about doing the work on your own.

 

 

 

 

I’m going in on this one this week because this is a topic I feel strongly about.

 

 

Week 4: (Nov. 19 to 23) – Reads Like Fiction (Rennie @ What’s Nonfiction): Nonfiction books often get praised for how they stack up to fiction. Does it matter to you whether nonfiction reads like a novel? If it does, what gives it that fiction-like feeling? Does it depend on the topic, the writing, the use of certain literary elements and techniques? What are your favorite nonfiction recommendations that read like fiction? And if your nonfiction picks could never be mistaken for novels, what do you love about the differences?

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I really dislike the phrase “reads like fiction” when it comes to describing nonfiction, and it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why. But I’m going to try to dissect this bit by bit.

“Reads like fiction,” is a shorthand way to describe a nonfiction title with a narrative arc that uses “literary techniques” to tell a story. In other words, it’s not a textbook or a guidebook. Instead, it has something akin to a plot, even though nonfiction doesn’t have a plot. Often, it has a thesis or a central theme it’s working to get across.

But we don’t do this sort of description for fiction. I can’t ever recall hearing a fiction title being described as “reads like nonfiction.” Certainly, descriptions about how well-researched or fact-filled a novel is comes up in a review or in a blurb for a book. But it’s not described and, more importantly, held up as good because it “reads like nonfiction.” Yet, that’s how “reads like fiction” comes across when applied to a nonfiction title. The book is championed because it’s got a rhythm and a flow to it that doesn’t feel like a textbook might.

Why, though, do we limit nonfiction to just a couple of categories? There’s nonfiction that “reads like fiction,” and then there’s nonfiction that doesn’t read like fiction. Yet, nonfiction is a very nuanced category of books, filled with a wide array of types of books. Certainly, there are textbooks, there are workbooks, there are guidebooks, and there are “fiction-like” books. But when you break it down further, “fiction-like” books eliminate a whole host of books that don’t fall neatly into the categories of workbooks, textbooks, guidebooks, and other similarly-formatted books.

Do essay collections read like fiction? If so, do they read more like short story collections than a novel? Given that short story collections can often be a hard sell to the average reader, is the same sort of mentality there when it comes to essay collections? Are they more likely to reach a specific audience, rather than a broader reading audience because they don’t “read like fiction?” Or, if they do “read like fiction,” they read more like short stories and therefore, a very specific type of fiction reading experience?

What about memoirs? Memoirs are, of course, a slice of time and experience within an individual’s life, as told through their own words. They might “read like fiction,” but does saying that also diminish and remove the empathy that we as readers should feel because they’re not fiction? Does it also muddy up the idea that someone’s lived experience could be so beyond what we perceive as “normal” that we’re skeptical and therefore able to discredit the story as an exaggeration or pockmarked with untruths? Tara Westover’s Educated is one that comes to mind immediately here: I’ve read many reviews that question the authenticity and the honesty, and I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason — aside from the infamous James Frey A Million Little Pieces debacle — is that the book reads so much like fiction that it’s easy to forget that there was likely immense pain going into the writing of one’s real, lived experience (and, of course, some sexism because that’s a given).

Perhaps the biggie for me is this: who determines what fiction and nonfiction read like? Fiction is such a rich array of stories and story telling styles. This is evident when you think about the fact fiction forms include comics, include verse, include epistolaries, and include other alternate formats. Nonfiction works similarly, but it’s not given the same sort of treatment for its varied formats that also includes comics, verse, epistolaries, and other alternate formats.

These determinations come from a dominate idea of what storytelling, literary techniques, and writing look like, and those determinations are often made by those in power. Cishet, straight, white people, with a strong leaning toward men as opposed to women in this category. The same people who determined the idea of what a Western Canon looked like. Who decided storytelling in English takes on certain structures and sticks to particular conventions and grammatical rules that were, again, created by one segment of people. It’s a limited scope of the potential for literature, and applying those same standards to nonfiction further limits the scope of people outside this demographic to share their truths in ways that are authentic to them and their experiences.

“Reads like fiction” flattens nonfiction and flattens the power of writing. It diminishes researched work and diminishes lived truths. But we return to it as a phrase to describe titles again and again because we haven’t found a language that allows us to better describe what makes a nonfiction title compelling and because we’ve limited ourselves to one frame of reference for talking about books. We haven’t spent the time teasing out the biases that exist in our own understanding of writing and presenting nonfiction. Rooting through oppression requires work.

I sat on a panel at the American Library Association’s conference this year called “Reads like Fiction: Nonfiction You Can’t Put Down.” Authors on the panel included Nicole Chung (All That You Can Ever Know, a memoir), Sarah Weinman (The Real Lolita, a book about the kidnapping of Sally Horner and the building of the book Lolita), Anne Boyd Rioux (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Matters, about the staying power of Alcott’s Little Women), and Eugenia Cheng (The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, a book about the power of logic and math in making sense of the world at large). Our books have nothing to do with one another and none of the themes carry over. There are personal stories here — my book and Nicole’s book — and there are two books that dig deep into the history and cultural aspects of two classic works of fiction — Sarah’s book and Anne’s book). Eugenia’s book is a book of applied research, presented in a way that anyone can access and better understand the ways we can navigate a challenging world through logic.

This sort of set-up wouldn’t happen in the world of fiction. It’s likely that the memoir-style books would end up on a genre-angled panel digging into that. The two books that present context and research to classic fiction would go into a genre-angled panel digging into that. And the book on logic would maybe fall into a genre-angled panel about applied math, science, and/or philosophy.

In other words, a panel on realistic fiction. A panel on historical fiction. A panel on science fiction.

There wasn’t a lot of room for nuance on the panel. While I loved hearing about all of the panelists books — and I’ve been making my way through them as they’ve published this fall — there was little room for digging into writing nonfiction or about the process behind each of the books. The process for each is so different, and the choices made in how to structure the books so different. But that becomes flattened under the simple description of “reads like fiction.”

I don’t think any of the books I’ve read from this panel, nor my own anthology, read like fiction. They read like the nonfiction styles they were developed to be. My fascination continues in thinking about the choices underpinning how those books were structured, how the formats helped carry the bigger points across.

“Reads like fiction” feels lazy. Certainly, it’s an easy way to sell a book to a skeptical reader. But to sell a book to a reader, the fiction readability comparison isn’t what most are after. They want a book that draws them in, that compels them in some way, and, even when presented a nonfiction title on a topic they were itching to find a novel about, it’s about the way one sells the topic itself. “Reads like fiction” doesn’t mean anything because fiction itself reads in so many ways. The same should be said about nonfiction.

I haven’t done a community-building series in a while, and given how much nonfiction means to me on a professional and a personal level, it feels like taking part in Nonfiction November would be more than worthwhile.

Week 1: (Oct. 29 to Nov. 2) – Your Year in Nonfiction (Kim @ Sophisticated Dorkiness):Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

 

My Favorite Nonfiction Read Of The Year?

If I could only pick one, it’d be the one I keep thinking about again and again: Creative Quest by Questlove. I listened to this one on audiobook and it was easily the best-performed audiobook I’ve ever listened to.

The book is about the creative process, without ever being a how-to or really about the process at all. It’s a smart book about how and where creativity can happen and it offers up an array of examples for how some of the most brilliant creatives find their stride. Questlove is enthusiastic and dynamic and insightful and encouraging. My biggest take away was the power in trying, in making mistakes, and in inviting play into everything, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel like it has a purpose. It does.

 

 

 

Is There A Particular Topic I’ve Been Attracted To More This Year?

A topic I’ve always loved and have found myself seeking out this year, especially on audio, are memoirs by women of color. I’ve found I’m reading far more nonfiction this year than normal, in no small part due to the fact I listen to so many of them. I keep most of my print reading to YA or adult fiction, and my audiobook consumption is all adult nonfiction.

I’m currently listening to Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home, which is her second memoir. This one focuses on her young adult years, being the first college graduate in her family, and how she came to become a writer.

I barreled through Sara Saedi’s Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card earlier this year and keep thinking about it. It’s full of humor and heart and gives real voice and perspective about being an immigrant in American “without papers.” Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know was a moving read about growing up adopted as a Korean child to white parents in a mostly white community.

I’ve also really loved two books by Jennifer Wright, Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and The Heroes Who Fought Them and It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History. Both are books about specific incidents in history, but they’re told with this fantastic dark humor that really makes them sing for me.

 

What Nonfiction Book Have I Recommended The Most?

Without question, the book I recommend over and over again — and one that’s absolutely changed my habits — is Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. Technically, I read this at the end of 2017, rather than 2018, but I’ve recommended it more this year than any other. This was a brutal and powerful read about the ways in which older Americans are “making due” while having little money to live off in their older years. Bruder follows a series of folks who are working seasonal, low-paying jobs that thrive from the work of these older workers, with a really in-depth look at CamperForce, Amazon’s seasonal employees. I have always known Amazon to be a problem with their workers, of course, but this was something else all together. Imagine your grandmother or grandfather walking 15-17 miles a day, getting repetitive injuries, and doing it for 10+ hours a day for a meager $7.25. I can’t.

This is one worth reading in print. The audiobook wasn’t especially great, but the book itself was so absorbing I kept going. It made me change my relationship with Amazon. I’m far less likely to quickly buy something there without thinking, knowing what the cost of my cheap, easy purchase really is on other people.

 

What I Am Hoping To Get Out Of Participating in Nonfiction November

It’s been so long since I’ve discovered new-to-me blogs. This is an opportunity to do that and it’s also an opportunity to write and read about a category of books I like to read because they aren’t the focus of my day-to-day work. I love writing and talking about books, but knowing that my focus is YA and not adult nonfiction….well, I enjoy knowing there’s a space I really get to enjoy books for me on my own accord.

I’m also selfish in liking to know what people are reading and talking about because as a writer and editor of nonfiction, it helps me think about how to be a better writer and better editor.

Plus, I can’t wait to add more nonfiction audiobooks on my to-listen list. Not that I’ll ever run out, but, just in case.