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Best-selling author Tim O’Brien shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons. “We are all writing our maybe books full of maybe tomorrows, and each maybe tomorrow brings another maybe tomorrow, and then another, until the last line of the last page receives its period.” Dad’s Maybe Book is a funny, tender, wise, and enduring literary achievement that will squeeze the reader’s heart with joy and recognition.
Greetings and salutations, nonfiction friends! As you’re reading this, I’m gearing up for Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, which kicks off where I live at 7 a.m. on Saturday. I’ve been starting to put together my stack of potential reads, and think I may try a new approach this year – finishing up all of the partially-finished books in my house!
For whatever reason, I’ve gotten in a bad habit of reading about half of any given book, then putting it down for something else. That means I’ve started, then stopped, a bunch of amazing nonfiction this year. From where I’m writing, I can see books like Leaving the Witness by Amber Scorah, Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer, and The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. I’m sure some fiction will make the pile, but that seems like a good start! I’ll report back next week.
For this week’s newsletter, I’ve rounded up some of the best of Book Riot’s nonfiction coverage from the last few months. Here’s what caught my eye:
I don’t particularly enjoy books by current politicians, but if you want to read up on candidates here’s a round-up of books from all of the 2020 Democratic candidates. It’s a doozy of a list because there are so many of them.
If you want to get your money’s worth on a book purchase, consider one of these nonfiction bricks – collections of essays, reviews, or articles that are around 1000 pages.
As if we needed it, here are six books to remind us why journalism is important. These are all real good.
I added a few books to my TBR thanks to this list of books about data science. So smart!
Or, start to learn more about climate change and the emergency happening on our planet with this excellent list.
I’m still not quite done with the audiobook of Leslie Jamison’s latest essay collection, Make it Scream, Make it Burn, but I still devoured this Q&A. Her process in putting together the collection, and how it relates to her first collection, The Empathy Exams, was fascinating to me.
Curious what nonfiction is popular on Goodreads? Rebecca did some service journalism to round up the top 30 books on the site, a collection of books with more than 100,000 ratings and an average rating of 3.90 or higher.
There has been a lot of nonfiction connected to the #MeToo movement published this year – here are a few of the best ones so far. Looking for something with more variety? Here are some of the best essay collections of the year so far. Like reading about famous people? Here are some celebrity memoirs hitting the shelves this fall.
For all the awesome ladies reading this newsletter (or anyone who loves ladies), check out five books for women who don’t play by the rules, or five boss lady books of nonfiction.
And to conclude with something a little lighter, here are three great animal memoirs.
And that’s all I’ve got. Thanks so much for reading! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim