Author: Kim Ukura

Hello, nonfiction friends! Yesterday, the Twin Cities branch of the U.S. National Weather Service tweeted out some of the best news I could imagine: the average high temperature on Sunday was officially one degree warmer than Saturday… which means we’re finally up the upswing from winter where I live! We’re a long way from tolerable weather, but it’s getting closer. Huzzah!

Before we get into the business of new books, I want to quickly mention that Book Riot has launched another podcast! Novel Gazing (the best name, truly) is hosted by Louise and Mary Kay, and focuses on the world of literary fiction. Check it out!

And now, let’s get into some new books! Here are three I’m excited about this week:

American Queenmaker: How Missy Meloney Brought Women Into Politics by Julie Des Jardins – Although Marie Meloney was born into an America where women couldn’t vote, she recognized the power women held in the domestic sphere. Through her work getting men in publishing and politics to take women seriously, Meloney created the “female demographic,” a story explored in this new biography.

Backlist Bump: If you want a more personal look at women in politics, grab a copy of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics by Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, Minyon Moore, and Veronica Chambers.

Year of The Rabbit by Tian Veasna – In this illustrated memoir, cartoonist Tian Veasna tells the story of his family’s journey to escape the “murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.” Veasna was born three days after the regime seized power, so the family fled their urban home for the countryside where they survived in work campus until they could escape as refugees.

Other Suggested Titles: Over at Book Riot, David Mitchell Som wrote about three other books to help understand the Cambodian genocide, including two excellent-looking memoirs: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung and The Years of Zero: Coming of Age Under the Khmer Rouge by Seng Ty.

Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker – If you’ve ever wondered what the point of learning all that math in high school was, this book might be the one for you. In it, Matt Parker explores how math works quietly behind the scenes of everything from the code in websites to the design of skyscrapers… and the ways it can go awry. He explores glitches, near misses, and mishaps all caused by bad math to show the place it holds in the world.

Backlist Bump: Another great book on math in the real world is How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics by Eugenia Cheng. It’s fun!

And if that wasn’t enough books for you this week, here are five others that caught my attention:

• The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg
• The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism by Kyle Chayka
• All the F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life by Gigi Engle
• How Yiddish Changed American and How America Changed Yiddish by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert
• The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Cell that Changed the Course of Medicine by Donna Jackson Nakazwa

That’s all the new books for this week! You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kimthedork and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. This week, we talked about some of our favorite books about classic Hollywood. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and happy Friday, nonfiction friends! For this week’s newsletter I wanted to do something a little different, a focus on Book Riot’s 2020 Read Harder Challenge.

Of the 24 tasks, there are three challenges that specifically call for nonfiction, 11 that call for fiction, and 10 more that fall somewhere in the middle. Today, I want to offer some nonfiction suggestions for those 10 tasks that don’t specify genre. Let’s get going!

1. Read a YA nonfiction book

3. Read a mystery where the victim(s) is not a woman: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt – I loved this atmospheric, character-driven true story about the murder of a young, male prostitute by a prominent Savannah antiques dealer.

4. Read a graphic memoir

5. Read a book about a natural disaster: Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala – This book is a memoir by a woman who lost her parents, husband, and two sons in a 2004 tsunami that devastated of Sri Lanka.

10. Read a book that takes place in a rural setting: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh – In this book, Sarah Smarsh shares her experience growing up poor on a small, family farm 30 miles outside of Wichita, Kansas in the 1980s and ’90s.

12. Read a memoir by someone from a religious tradition (or lack of religious tradition) that is not your own

13. Read a food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before: Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson – Born in Ethiopia but raised in Sweden by his grandmother, Marcus Samuelsson tells his story of becoming a chef and opening his own “diverse, multiracial dining room” in Harlem.

15. Read a book about climate change: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert – There are a lot of nonfiction books about climate change you could grab, but I’m suggesting this one because Alice (my co-host of For Real) has raved about it. In it, Elizabeth Kolbert looks at previous mass extinction events and argues that we’re in the midst of a sixth right now.

16. Read a doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, written by a woman: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson – This book is a comprehensive history and impact of the Great Migration, a movement of Black and African American citizens from the South to cities across the United States. It’s long (640 pages in paperback), but reads fast.

17. Read a book by or about a refugee: The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya – At 15, Clemantine Wamariya and her sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre, spending six years migrating across Africa. When she was 12, they were granted refugee status in the United States. This is an incredible memoir.

20. Read a middle grade book that doesn’t take place in the U.S. or the UK: I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition) by Malala Yousafzai and Patricia McCormick – In this best-selling memoir, Malala Yousafzai shares her story of being shot by the Taliban on her bus ride to school. Since surviving the attack, Yousafzai has become an international advocate for education for girls and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. This adaptation for young readers includes additional photos and material from the original.

21. Read a book with a main character or protagonist with a disability (fiction or non): The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang – In this collection of essays, Esmé Weijun Wang writes about her journey towards a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, including the complexities of labeling mental illnesses, the challenges for college students with mental illnesses, the dangers of institutions, and the challenges of living with a mental illness and chronic illness.

24. Read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author: Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot – This memoir is a woman’s coming of age story while living on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest, and how she used writing to cope with a dual diagnosis of PTSD and bipolar II disorder.

Whew, that’s a lot of books! Congrats on finishing another week, and good luck with your Read Harder 2020 endeavors. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kimthedork and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and happy Wednesday, nonfiction readers! This week is cold and snowy in Minnesota, so I am planning to be cuddled up with books as much as possible over the coming days. This week, there are some great new books to grab, including one of the more anticipated memoirs of the year. Let’s take a peek!

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Weiner – In her mid-20s, Anna Weiner left an East Coast job in book publishing for a West Coast job in Silicon Valley. The book offers a first-hand account of “reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition,” a story we’re still sorting out today. This book is one of the most highly-anticipated titles of January, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Further Listening: In an interview with NPR, Weiner talks about the conflicting perks and values that were part of Silicon Valley culture.

Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani – This illustrated history tells the story of the 60-year Great Migration and its impact on Black identity and American life as a whole. It explores topics like voting rights, domestic terrorism, activism, and civil rights, along with stories about famous and everyday people. It looks beautiful!

Backlist Bump: Imani’s first book also looks beautiful – Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History.

Father of Lions: One Man’s Remarkable Quest to Save the Mosul Zoo by Louise Callaghan – There’s a weird, specific sub-genre of nonfiction all about trying to save animals and artifacts from wars. This book is about the Mosul Zoo in Iraq, which served as a staging ground for ISIS fighters while the city was under siege. The caretaker of the zoo, Abu Laith, hid from insurgents to try and keep the animals from starving until the city is liberated.

Further Reading: If you don’t mind spoilers, you can read about the final evacuation of animals from the zoo, which took place in March 2017.

And finally, a few other books that might be of interest this week:

• Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wuddun
• Lord of All the Dead: A Nonfiction Novel by Javier Cercas
• Conversations in Black: On Power, Politics, and Leadership by Ed Gordon
• Start by Believing: Larry Nassar’s Crimes, the Institutions that Enabled Him, and the Brave Women Who Stopped a Monster by Dan Murphy and John Barr
• A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond by Daniel Susskind

That’s all for today! You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kimthedork and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello, nonfiction readers! We’re at the end of the first full week of 2020 and boy, does it feel like it’s been a doozy of a year already. I hoped that the turning of the calendar would help kick me out of the slower reading pace I seemed to adopt for all of 2019, but that hasn’t been the case – I still haven’t finished a book in 2020!

But, I’m trying not to let that get me down too much. The books I am reading (so, so slowly) are still excellent, but I don’t have anything new to report. I have high hopes that by this time next week I’ll be able to check a couple off my list. More to come!

This week’s nonfiction news is a mix – we’re starting with news about Just Mercy, highlighting a recently-announced book that sounds amazing, and finishing with a couple of 2020 reading lists. Let’s go!

A documentary about Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and subject of an upcoming film by the same name, is now available to stream for free! HBO’s True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality can be viewed for free on the Equal Justice Initiative’s website. If you haven’t read Just Mercy, please please please do yourself a favor and pick it up. It’s incredible.

Speaking of Just Mercy, the film adaptation of the book opens this week! The movie stars Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson, Jamie Foxx and Walter McMillan, and Brie Larson and Eva Ansley. From what I can gather, the reception has generally been good (even while acknowledging there are some storytelling formulas at work in the film):

• The New York Times said the film conveys some of the gravity and urgency of the book.
• USA Today did an interesting fact check about the real story behind McMillan’s case.
• Variety asked whether the movie could “set a new standard for inclusion” (cool!) and highlights what a great person Bryan Stevenson is.
• The Hollywood Reporter specifically calls out the structure and editing of the courtroom scenes in the movie.
• The Washington Post calls the movie a tale that is “shattering, satisfying, and true.”

TL;DR on all of that is to go see this movie because it’s based on a book that’s truly remarkable, and we all want to see good books get more attention.

Stacey Abrams (all around excellent person) is writing a book on voting rights and ending voter suppression that will come out in June. Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America will include her experience running for governor in Georgia, where her campaign raised questions about all sorts of activities related to voting access. She now leads the voting rights organization Fair Fight.

Electric Literature pulled together 56 books by women and nonbinary writers of color from 2020, which includes a good number of upcoming memoirs. I added American Harvest by Marie Mutsuki Mockett (April 2020 from Graywolf Press) and Conditional Citizens by Laila Lalami (April 2020 from Pantheon) to my list.

BitchReads suggests 17 memoirs feminists should read in 2020, and it’s quite a list. A couple that are on my list include The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayétu Moore (June 2020 from Graywolf Press) and Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford (July 2020 from Little Brown).

And that’s all for this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. This week, Alice and I took a dive into some upcoming 2020 tiles we’re looking forward to picking up. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello nonfiction lovers, it’s time to talk about new books! The first Tuesday of 2020 has plenty of excellent titles to get psyched about, so I’m going to skip the preamble and get right into it. I’ve got three books to highlight and another seven to mention for a total of 10 books to kick off your reading year. Onwards!

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain – Looking from the civil rights to Ferguson, this book looks at “how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America.” Chatelain explores the history of cooperation among “fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders” to bring fast food restaurants to black neighborhoods and the long-running impacts those decisions have had. This one sounds fascinating.

Further Reading: Chatelain contributed to an interesting Politico piece about how history books will remember the 2010s. Her paragraph is first, but the rest of it is a good read too.

Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity by Peggy Orenstein – Following up on her book Girls & Sex, journalist Peggy Orenstein returns to the subject to look at how cultural forces around female sexiness and toxic masculinity can also affect how boys understand sex. Orenstein again draws on interviews with young people to reveal “how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy.” The book explores locker room talk, hookup culture and consent, sexual violence, and more. I felt like Girls and Sex was a must-read book for parents, and can only assume this one will be too.

Further Reading: In the Boston Globe, Orenstein talks about why she decided to revisit this topic, what it’s like to interview teens about sex, and what she hopes her book can do for parents.

Don’t Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language by David Shariatmadari – Language can be difficult to study because we need to have a grasp of language to even get started. Over the last several decades, we’ve reached new insights in linguistics but still believe many outdated myths about how language works. In this book, Shariatmadari looks at the science of language, undermining nine myths about language while exploring “the fundamental insights of modern linguistics.” Word nerds, go find this one!

Further Reading: Shariatmadari is an editor at The Guardian who has written some great articles on language, including this one about the top 10 words of 2019.

And finally, a few more titles that caught my attention:

• F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me by Chloe Hilliard
• Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition by P. Carl
• Average is the New Awesome: A Manifesto for the Rest of Us by Samantha Matt
• Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor
• The Kids Are in Bed: Finding Time for Yourself in the Chaos of Parenting by Rachel Bertsche
• Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun
• This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Aurélia Durand and Tiffany Jewell (YA nonfiction)

And that’s a wrap! You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kimthedork and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. This week, Alice and I talked about some of the books we’re looking forward to in 2020. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello hello fellow nonfiction readers! Let me be the latest person to welcome you to 2020, a year that feels like it should still be in some distant future where we have robot servants and flying cars and all wear strange metallic clothing everywhere.

One of my favorite reading rituals each January is picking my first books of the year. If time and library holds allow, I like to try and pick books that are 1) already on my bookshelves, and 2) help set a tone for the year ahead. In a year I wanted to stretch creatively, I chose Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. In a year I was thinking about living a full life, I chose 2019, Awakening Your Ikigai by Ken Mogi.

This year, I’m thinking a lot about the connections in my life – to people, places, passions, and my work – and what I can do to deepen those bonds. To help with that, my first book this year is Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, a book that’s been on my shelves for years but I never make time to read. I’m hoping that her lessons on how vulnerability can transform our lives will be an inspirational way to kick off this big year.

Have you ever deliberately picked a first book to help set the tone for your year? I’d love to hear about it!

This week, I’ve got three news stories with connections to nonfiction and journalism that caught my attention late last year. Let’s go!

Bloomberg Opinion writers shared some of their recommendations for turning the page from 2019 to 2020. It’s an interesting list and, as you might expect, rather heavy on nonfiction (especially nonfiction by journalists, which you know I love).

A judge ruled that Edward Snowden won’t be making any money on his memoir, Permanent Record, because “he failed to get pre-publication clearance from U.S. security agencies.” Because he didn’t submit the book to both the CIA and the NSA for review of classified content, Snowden violated his employment contracts. The judge said he also can’t claim the government wouldn’t have reviewed the book in good faith and in a timely manner because he didn’t try to submit it.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is demanding that Warner Bros. release a statement “acknowledging it took dramatic license” in the portrayal of journalist Kath Scruggs in the new Clint Eastwood film Richard Jewell. The movie looks at the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, specifically profiling the security guard who discovered the bomb and was subsequently a suspect in the bombing. It suggests that Scruggs, a journalist at the paper, traded sex for tips from an FBI agent. This story is rather fascinating to me, definitely check out the details at the link.

And finally, there have been a few great posts over at Book Riot in the last few weeks I want to make sure you don’t miss:

• 6 Nonfiction Walt Disney Books About the Man and Company
• 20 Cookbooks to Get the Most Out of Your Gifts
• 7 Timely Nonfiction Books to Add to Your TBR List in 2020
• 5 of the Best Nonfiction Books About Sexual Assault
• Candid Portraits or Ghostwritten Fluff: The History of the Celebrity Book

And that’s all for this first week of January! I’ll be back to a regular newsletter schedule next week with new books on Tuesday and nonfiction news on Friday. 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

It’s Friday, nonfiction friends! It’s also the last edition of this newsletter in 2019… how on earth did this happen? At the moment, I’m just hanging on through my last few days of work before taking next week off for a much-needed vacation and disconnect. I’m heading up to my parents’ house where I plan to read, eat, and nap as much as possible.

Picking out the books I want to bring on a vacation is one of my favorite things! I always try to pull together a mix of fiction and nonfiction that covers a range of topics and moods and styles. I haven’t settled on anything officially yet, but I anticipate The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Powers will be on my pile, along with a book I just picked up at the library, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal. But we’ll see, vacation reads are always a moving target until the moment I get out the door!

Given the impending holidays, it’s been a generally quiet week in the world of publishing news. I decided to use this last newsletter to bundle up a bunch of specific “best of the year” nonfiction lists all in one place:

• Time: Best Nonfiction Books of 2019
• Paste: The 19 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019
• Kirkus Review: Best Nonfiction of 2019 By Category
• CS Monitor: The best nonfiction books of 2019 pull you into other lives
• Esquire: The Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 Span Everything from True Crime to Scammer Culture
• Amazon Book Review: The best nonfiction books of 2019

I also wanted to point out the winners of this year’s 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards, which I usually like a lot because there’s such a variety of nonfiction represented in the different categories. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed in the nonfiction winners this year:

• Humor: Dear Girls by Ali Wong
• Nonfiction: Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis
• Memoir and Autobiography: Over the Top by Jonathan Van Ness
• History and Biography: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
• Science and Technology: Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty
• Food and Cookbooks: Antoni in the Kitchen by Antoni Porowski

I’m not sure what about that list is rubbing me the wrong way. I think maybe there’s just not much there that’s surprising or feels particularly innovative. C’est la vie.

And if that’s not enough, I also admire the work that went into LitHub’s ultimate list of best books of 2019, which tallies up multiple lists to find the ultimate winners. I was excited to see a few nonfiction books on a majority of the lists, including In the Dream House and Trick Mirror on 16 lists and Say Nothing on 14 lists.

And that’s all you’ll hear from me in 2019! Thank you, again, for inviting me into your inbox twice each week. I’ll be back with more new nonfiction and nonfiction news on Friday, January 3. In the mean time, 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

Hello and happiest of Wednesdays, nonfiction friends! Given the dates of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays this year, this will be my last Monday newsletter until 2020. This make it feel like the perfect time to dive into some of my favorite reads of the year.

A quick caveat – this is definitely not a “best books of the year” list. I never read enough to really be able to do a list like that. Instead, I can just speak to my own idiosyncratic and limited reading over the last 12 months. These are just 10 of the books that meant the most to me this year, listed in the order I finished them.

Parkland: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen – This book is an account of the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and the student activists who have emerged in the wake of the tragedy. It’s an empathetic, meticulously reported book that I couldn’t put down. It’s also a fascinating companion to Cullen’s other major book, Columbine, another one I highly recommend.

 

 

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi and Joshua David Stein – This memoir is about how Kwame Onwuachi went from being a kid in the Bronx to a celebrated chef in Washington D.C. His path took him all over, from New York to Nigeria to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. I loved how honest he was about his choices (both good and bad), and appreciated hearing about his perspective and experiences as a black man in a largely white industry.

 

Good Talk by Mira Jacob – This graphic memoir is about “American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us.” It’s heavy, but also really funny, and increasingly relevant as political divides become even more stark. I’m not sure I read a more heartbreaking or relevant book this year, which I say in the best way possible. Go read this one!

 

 

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang – This book is a collection of autobiographical essays about what it’s like to struggle with both mental illness and a chronic illness. Esmé Weijun Wang begins with her initial diagnosis with a “schizoaffective disorder,” then goes on to look at arguments about labeling and diagnosis procedures, how schizophrenia manifests, and other misconceptions surrounding her diagnosis. It’s fascinating and beautifully written.

No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder – Each day around the world, 137 women are killed by familial violence. And 54 percent of mass shootings in America today involve domestic violence. These statistics are at the core of the argument in this book: that domestic violence isn’t a private problem, it’s an urgent matter of public health. Rachel Louise Snyder explores big questions about domestic violence with really precise, articulate, and confident reporting. It’s remarkable and so very important.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski – If I had to pick the book that had the biggest impact on me personally this year, it’d be this one. This spring and summer, I realized that I was experiencing many of the symptoms of burnout and needed to do something about it. This book changed my outlook, specifically looking at what stress is like for women and offering concrete steps to address it in both the short and long term. Lightbulbs!

 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb – After a traumatic break-up, therapist Lori Gottlieb realized she needed some help in processing her thoughts and emotions. This book is all about therapy – what it’s like to go to therapy, what it’s like to be a therapist, and what it takes to really get the most out of therapy that you can. Gottlieb is open with her experiences, and writes about her own patients with an incredible sense of empathy. I was very moved by this book.

Make it Scream, Make it Burn by Leslie Jamison – This collection of essays from one of my favorite authors covers a huge range of subjects, from children with past-life memories to a lonely whale named 52 Blue, to the author’s feelings about becoming a stepmother and a mother. I appreciate how specifically Leslie Jamison interrogates her thoughts and feelings, and how the themes of connection and privilege and perspective play into her work. She’s a really interesting thinker.

 

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado – For many years, Carmen Maria Machado was part of an abusive queer relationship. In the book, she plays with format and narrative tropes to tell the story of that relationship and try to better understand queer domestic abuse more generally. I loved the way she used different storytelling techniques to see the relationship in different ways, and how each piece built on everything we’d already learned. It was utterly fascinating to read, and a book I’ve already recommended many times.

And there you have it, 10 of my favorite reads this year! It’s been such a great year of books, even if it feels like my reading pace has been positively glacial.

Come share your favorites with me! 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

Hello and happiest of Fridays, nonfiction readers! The terrible weather in Minnesota has been alleviated, a bit, but the arrival of one of my favorite tools: NPR’s Book Concierge. This is an amazing resource for book discovery that brings together more than 2,000 recommendations from staff across NPR. I love, love, love playing around with it to find books I missed or forgot I wanted to read. Check it out!

My nonfiction reading this week has been a bit slow, but I did manage to finish an excellent audiobook, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby! This collection of essays feels like it’s about a little bit of everything – budgets, The Bachelorette, awkward sex and loser exes, childhood trauma, poverty, and more. It was hilarious, gross, sad, and so very smart. I really liked it, but I feel like I have to be a little cautious in recommending it – it could be a little rough if you’re squeamish.

Yay, books! Let’s switch gears and get to this week’s nonfiction news:

Esmé Weijun Wang has landed a two-book deal with Riverhead Books! The deal includes a novel, Soft Animals, and a work of nonfiction, The Unexpected Shape, which explores “the balance between ambition and limitation in contemporary life.” Her 2019 essay collection, The Collected Schizophrenias, is one of my favorites of the year, so I couldn’t be more thrilled for her.

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for their annual first book prize. The list includes several great nonfiction books: The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden, and Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. The winner will be announced at the NBCC awards ceremony in March 2020.

The American Library Association has announced the finalists for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, honoring nonfiction published for young adults. It’s another interesting list, although a little heavy on World War II-related nonfiction for my personal tastes.

Over at Book Riot

The 2020 Read Harder posts are starting to publish and I am very excited about it! Here are some great posts from over at Book Riot this week:

• Read Harder: A YA nonfiction book
• Read Harder: A graphic memoir
• 3 Books that Open Up Complex Conversations Around Interpersonal Violence
• 7 Books that Illustrate Life as a Woman in Politics

And that’s all for this week! You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kimthedork and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello hello, nonfiction readers! Since the world of publishing slows down so much for the holidays, I’ve decided to bundle the rest of the 2019 books I’m excited about into a single newsletter. So, here are four more December releases to get on your radar before the decade ends and we jump into 2020:

World Begins: The History of the French Revolution by Jeremy Popkin (December 10) – Historian Jeremy Popkin’s account of the debates, violence, and upheaval of the French Revolution puts readers right in the middle of this significant time. This comprehensive account includes stories of scholars, the monarchy, women, and slaves demanding rights, and more. It looks like this is about a detailed a look as you can get, which actually sounds interesting to me.

 

The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America by Ganesh Sitaraman (December 10) – In this book, a progressive intellectual explores the two major eras of political history since the New Deal of the 1930s – the liberal era and the neoliberal era – and what might be coming next. Ganesh Sitaraman argues there are two possible eras coming – a nationalist oligarchy for the rich and powerful, or a great democracy that offers “political and economic power to all people.”

And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood by Rachel Friedman (December 31) – As a child, Rachel Friedman was a serious violinist who attended the prestigious arts camp Interlochen. In college she quit music, but always wondered what it might have been like to pursue a creative life. To learn more about creativity, art, and adulthood, she reaches out to her young classmates to see how their early creative explorations have manifested in adult life. I think this sounds so interesting and fun.

The Guilty Feminist: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Overthrow the Patriarchy by Deborah Frances-White (December 31) – We all want to be great feminists, but also sometimes want to take a break. In this book, author and podcaster Deborah Frances-White argues that “we don’t have to be perfect to be a force for meaningful change.” In the book “she explodes the myth of the model activist and offers a realistic path toward changing the world.”

Backlist Bump: The premise of this book reminds me a bit of Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, which is definitely a positive comparison.

And that’s a wrap on new 2019 releases. I can’t even believe it! You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kimthedork and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. This week, Alice and I talked about some of our favorite nonfiction of the decade. Happy reading! – Kim