I’m very excited because tomorrow marks the beginning of one of my favourite themed reading months of the year – Non-Fiction November hosted by Olive from ABookOlive. The behind the monthly event is simple: read more non-fiction than you usually do. If you never read it, read one non-fiction book. If you normally read two or three, read four. If you read any non-fiction in the month of November, you are participating. It’s that easy. To up the game for those who like a bigger challenge, each year Olive selects four words as themes. If you want to, you can read one or more books from one or more of these themes, and you are invited to get creative (for example, her pick for “sport” was a book about The Great Gatsby, because characters in the book refer to one another as “old sport”).
I am going to try to do the four theme words this year, though I’m not sure if I’ll be successful! Below I’m going to include my TBR pick or picks for each of the four themes, and if I have any other recommendations that fit them, I will include some as well. Then I’m going to include a few TBR and recommendations of non-fiction books that don’t fit any of the themes. Here we go!
Design
Lonely City is one I have heard masses of praise for. I don’t know that much about it, but I think it deals with how urbanization affects community – or lack thereof. I hope it will look at how changes in the design of social structure led to both improvements and problems for those of us living in cities. The Body is Bill Bryson’s newest book, and that’s really all I need to know to be interested. For those of you who require a little more info, it’s a deep dive into what is in a human body, how it works and how it sometimes doesn’t. I’ve always been in awe of how many tiny parts a human body contains, and how they all need to function correctly and in symbiosis with one another for someone to be healthy. I find it amazing that so many people aren’t sick or differently abled considering how much could go wrong or end up slightly different. Feminist City really is a look at how cities are designed – specifically how they are designed with men in mind, and how this affects the day-to-day lives of women.
Recommended:
Poverty Safari is a little bit of a stretch for the design prompt, I’ll admit, but there are pieces of the narrative that touch on social design. One is how the high rise social assisted housing was thought up and the unfulfilled promise the idea made to improve lives. Another is how poverty has such far-reaching effects that it’s nearly impossible for those born into it to get out – and how the programs put in place to try and help are often misguided or short-lived. Locking Up Our Own draws a lot of connections between how black people were treated during and shortly after slavery, and how the prison-industrial system is racialized today. It lays out a convincing argument that there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two systems, and leaves a chilling impression of how America got where it is today in relation to racial politics. I almost forgot about The Devil In the White City, but it fits the prompt very well since it deals with dual narratives – one from the perspective of an architect designing the Chicago World Fair, and the other from the perspective of a serial killer designing a murder house he uses to prey on young women coming to town to work the fair. It’s chilling, fast-paced and a lot more interesting than I expected. It also scared the bejesus out of me, so fair warning.
Sport
Eat Sweat Play is one I’ve heard talked about on BookTube a lot, and though I’m not that into sports, I am into women addressing inequality and erroneous assumptions about where in society we belong.
Voice
The first three on this list relate directly to music and musicians. A fairly obvious connection to the topic. Make It Scream, Make It Burn I include because I want to read it, and it has “scream” in the title. That’s a voice thing, so there you go!
Recommended:
Naked At the Albert Hall made me care about singing in a way I never thought possible. Tracey Thorn does such a wonderful job of really exploring what it means to be a singer, how it feels when your voice doesn’t work as you want it to, particularly when that happens on stage in front of an audience of hundreds (or thousands) and some of the history and mythology of singing. Her pacing is excellent, her narrative style is engaging and she is just such a wonderful person with such passion and insight that anything she cares about she can make you care about too. This Is A Call will probably only appeal to those of you out there who are fans of Dave Grohl or The Foo Fighters. But it’s an excellent biography and does a great job of capturing some of what makes Dave such an all-around fantastic bloke. I was a fan before I started, but a much bigger one when I finished.
Truth
I’ve used this category as something of a catch-all, since non-fiction is generally about the truth of something. The Death of Truth is the only one I’ve included because of its inclusion of the prompt word in the title, though I’m not sure if I’m going to get to it. My Name Is Why is Lemn Sissay’s account of his search for the truth about his birth mother and how he ended up a foster child in a British home. I’ve started this one and it’s beautifully written (Sissay is, after all, a poet), but hard to grapple with. As he unearths documentation of his birth and adoption it becomes clear that the British state kidnapped him from his mother, giving her no real say in the matter and no recourse for getting him back. It’s shocking and, as a mother myself, terrifying. Voluntary Madness is an account of Norah Vincent (thought at the time suffering from depression) purposely getting herself checked into three mental health facilities in the US to find out what happened there, and how the care she received would differ between state run and private facilities. The Inconvenient Indian has been on my TBR forever. I’ve started it several times and I want to read it, but every time I start it I end up getting distracted or overwhelmed and putting it down again. It’s an important look at the history of the first peoples of North America, and the legacy that history has created. It’s one I consider to be essential reading, and I need to get to it soon.
Recommended:
I just finished Breaking and Mending and found it to be a very emotional look into what it’s really like to train as a doctor in England’s NHS (National Health Service). Overworked, largely ignored and forced to choose between her own welfare and the immediate needs of her patients, Cannon recounts her struggles and talks about some of the patients she met along the way who left a lasting impression. Written with her trademark insight and grace, this is definitely one to read. Natives is one of my favourite books of the year so far. It looks at the history of race relations in the UK and the history that went into creating them. It’s an intelligent criticism of current policies and viewpoints, and every few pages provides some nugget of wisdom that will make you stop and go “wow.”
Other Non-Fiction On My TBR
The first three of these I’ve already started and am very interested in. Skint Estate and Lowborn both deal with poverty in the UK (leading on from Poverty Safari) and Rife is a selection of short works about issues of interest and import to Britain’s youth. I have no idea what the fourth one will be like, but I’m hoping to learn from it and hopefully it will help me as my own daughter gets older.
How To Survive A Plague is about the origins and trajectory of the AIDS crisis. I loved And the Band Played On, and I’m hoping this one will be equally interesting and informative. All Involved I don’t know that much about, but I think it deals with race and police in the US, which is a topic I’m trying to learn more about, because I think it’s one of the most important issues in the world at the moment. Ask Me About My Uterus is about a woman’s search for treatment for endometriosis, I think, but also a look at how women are ignored and overlooked in the medical system – something I’ve encountered and have found to be even worse once you’re on record with a mental health issue. I have a lot of anger on the issue. Dopesick is about another important issue of the time – the opiate crisis. I only know a little bit about it based on news and some documentaries, but I would like to learn more about it.
I’ve had This Is Going to Hurt on my TBR for ages – I’ve even started and loved it – and after reading Joanna Cannon’s Breaking and Mending my interest in another memoir about junior doctor’s true experiences is piqued. We Are the Weather seems to be another timely book about our current environmental crisis and how to address it. I’ve started it, and like that it also has an appealing narrative style. Nobody Told Me is an account of motherhood, and I’m always looking for any honest portrayal of what it’s like to be a mom, with all its joys and challenges. And finally Evicted is about the housing crisis in the US and talks to both tenants and landlords to find out the pressures and conflicts they are each up against. I think it won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back, as did Locking Up Our Own (which I loved) so I have high hopes!
I could keep going for ages, but I think that’s more than enough. If you’d like to see some of the other non-fiction books on my TBR or see some I’d recommend, check out my post on the topic here.
I’d love to hear your TBR for Non-Fiction November and if you’ve read any of these or if you are now interested in checking them out, tell me all about it in the comments! Good luck to all of you participating!
