Category: True Story

Hello and happy holiday Friday, nonfiction friends! I can’t wait to get out of town for the first official weekend of summer. I see books, booze, and a sparkling blue lake in my future!

---

Sponsored by Scribd

In 1978, Harper Lee’s fame had reached a fever pitch following the remarkable success of her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she had written little of consequence in the nearly two decades since. She was searching for her next book when the perfect story landed in her lap. A call from back home in Alabama lit the match: A reverend — described as “six-feet-four-inches of majesty and dread” —  allegedly murdered five of his family members, without detection. Each time, he got rich off their life insurance policies but reaped no consequences. Vanity Fair’s special correspondent, Mark Seal, retraces the legendary novelist’s return home to Alabama to chase down a true crime mystery for the ages in THE DEVIL AND HARPER LEE.

---

But before that, I didn’t want to let Mental Health Awareness Month go by without taking a little bit of space to share some books that have been helpful to me in that area. There aren’t books about mental illnesses specifically, but instead books that I’ve turned to and can recommend as I’ve worked on some of my own mental health challenges.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski – This spring has been particularly stressful at my day job. About a month ago, I realized all of bad feelings I was having were connected… I was getting burned out. Like any good nerd, I turned to books to help find the answer. Burnout was a huge help. The book specifically looks at what stress is like for women, and offers concrete steps to address it in both the short and long term. Reading it felt like turning on a light bulb.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb – After life-altering breakup, Lori Gottlieb realized she needed some help, ending up on the couch of a therapist who seemed to come straight from central casting. In the book, Gottlieb talks about her experiences as a patient, her experiences as a therapist, and how therapists do their work to help others. This book is absolutely fascinating, and gives such a good peek into why we sometimes need an outsider to help us get a healthy perspective on our own lives.

Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self by Manoush Zomorodi – Like many smart people, I think that constant connection via our devices can have negative impacts on our mental health. This book is about a 2015 experiment Manoush Zomorodi conducted via her podcast, Note to Self, that encouraged people to “ unplug from their devices, get bored, jump-start their creativity, and change their lives.” The book goes through the different facets of the experiment and offers some applicable tips to combat busyness and find more space on life. It’s a great, concrete way to think about your device and the impact it has on your mental health.

Finally, I want to close out the newsletter with a few tidbits of nonfiction news:

Marie Kondo is writing two new books! She announced the new books on Instagram, then shared that the first one will be a children’s book that “ follows two best friends — Kiki, a collector, and Jax, a sorter — as they work through what it means when their friendship has to navigate things.” Totes adorbs.

Did you know there’s a Nonfiction Women Book Club on Instagram? I did not! It looks cool. You can check out an interview with the co-founders over at Book Riot.

Speaking of book clubs… there’s a club in Iowa planning to read all of the autobiographies written by Democratic candidates running for president. NPR’s Weekend Edition did a short piece about the club and their big project.

Patton Oswalt talked about Michelle McNamara and her book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, with the Los Angeles Review of Books blog to celebrate the paperback release of the book. I thought his answer about the hybrid nature of the book, part memoir and part true crime, was interesting.

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. Happy reading! – Kim

Happy Wednesday, fellow nonfiction nerds! I’ve been experimenting with this radical new idea of not watching as much television so I can read more, and it’s going positively swimmingly. I’ve finished a couple books in the last week, and it’s really reinvigorated my reading mojo. Which is good, because there are always more new books to check out. Let’s dive in to take a look and what’s new this week!

---

Sponsored by Scribd

In 1978, Harper Lee’s fame had reached a fever pitch following the remarkable success of her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she had written little of consequence in the nearly two decades since. She was searching for her next book when the perfect story landed in her lap. A call from back home in Alabama lit the match: A reverend — described as “six-feet-four-inches of majesty and dread” —  allegedly murdered five of his family members, without detection. Each time, he got rich off their life insurance policies but reaped no consequences.

Vanity Fair’s special correspondent, Mark Seal, retraces the legendary novelist’s return home to Alabama to chase down a true crime mystery for the ages in THE DEVIL AND HARPER LEE.

---

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas – Why yes, I would love to read an academic look at how “the diversity crisis in children’s and young adult media is not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination” by looking carefully at four black girl protagonists from popular stories.

Further Reading: Thomas makes some excellent reading recommendations in this interview with School Library Journal.

Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall – It takes a lot to get me on board with a 600+ page biography, but this one sounds so interesting. This book follows the story of three female descendants (born between 1888 and 1897) of a slaveholding family, and how their paths diverged after two moved North and one stayed in the South.

Further Reading: Dowd was featured by the American Historical Association, where she talked a bit about the book.

Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini – This book explores “the re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences,” looking at how ideas from eugenics made their way into research into the human genome and how “science is retrofitted to accommodate race.” This seems like a great follow up to Saini’s 2017 book about what science has gotten wrong about women, Inferior.

Further Reading: Saini has an article in The Guardian about the book, perhaps an excerpt, although it’s not called out as one specifically.

The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record by Jonathan Scott – In 1977 a team was tasked with putting together a record to travel with NASA’s Voyager probe. This record was supposed to represent humanity and paint a picture of Earth for those who might find it. That’s a huge ask! This book puts together the story of that artifact, which sounds so fascinating.

Further Reading: Publisher’s Weekly included the book in a list of books for the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing. Yay, space!

And finally, a few other titles that might be of interest for True Story readers:

• Bossed Up: A Grown Woman’s Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together Book by Emilie Aries
• The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia by Marin Sardy
• How to Forget: A Daughter’s Memoir by Kate Mulgrew
• The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin
• The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple
• The Naked Truth: A Memoir by Leslie Morgan
• Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption by Ben Mezrich

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. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello, nonfiction friends and readers! I want to start out this week’s newsletter with some sad news I neglected to share last week. Rachel Held Evans, a Christian author, blogger, and thinker, died suddenly on May 4 after a short, tragic illness. She leaves behind a husband, two children, and a legacy of progressive Christianity that challenged Evangelicals and sought to open the church up to those who felt unwelcome.

---

Sponsored by Kawaii Craft Life by Sosae Caetano and Dennis Caetano

Kawaii Craft Life is a first-of-its-kind needlecraft book featuring 35 super-cute projects to decorate the home or give as gifts. Add an adorable kawaii touch to your home, dorm room, or office with this charming collection of feltcraft, cross-stitch, and embroidery projects. It includes materials lists and hand-stitching basics, step-by-step instructions and illustrations, printable templates, and beautiful photography. A celebration of all things kawaii style and suitable for both beginners and seasoned crafters alike, you can create dozens of cute and cuddly crafts.

---

I haven’t read any of her work, so I have to rely on some others to share their thoughts on her writing, thinking, and legacy:

• The Literary Legacy of Rachel Held Evans at Book Riot
• The Radical Inclusivity of Rachel Held Evans in The New Yorker
• How Rachel Held Evans really should be remembered in the Washington Post
• How progressive Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans changed everything in Vox

I’ve heard excellent things about all of her books, particularly the two most recent – Inspired and Searching for Sunday – so hopefully I can pick one of those up soon.

It feels weird to go from that really sad event to other news, but I guess that’s the nature of a newsletter. This week I’ve got a couple new book announcements and some thoughts on a book festival I attended last weekend. First, new books:

Michael Wolff has written a “sequel” to Fire and Fury, and it’s coming out on June 4. Siege: Trump Under Fire was just announced this week, and is described by the publisher as an “equally essential and explosive book about a presidency that is under fire from almost every side.” It begins at the beginning of Trump’s second year and ends with the completion of the Mueller report. This is a book a lot of people are probably going to read… and I’ll be happy just reading the excerpts that get reported.

Chelsea Manning is writing a memoir. Due next year, the book will be about her childhood, her time as a soldier, and “how her plea for increased institutional transparency and government accountability take place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman.” Manning also told reporters that she and the publisher are trying to avoid having to submit the manuscript to the government for a classified information review. That’s interesting!

And second, book festival! This weekend was the first annual Wordplay festival in Minneapolis. This event was organized by The Loft, an amazing local literary organization, and was really impressive for a first year. I was able to hear several great authors (mostly nonfiction) talk about their books:

• Mira Jacob (Good Talk) and poet Tina Chang (Hybrida) spoke about raising mixed-race kids, and how some of the most difficult conversations we need to have are with people we love but also deeply disagree with.
• Anika Fajardo (Magical Realism for Nonbelievers) and Vanessa McGrady (Rocks Needs River) shared some of their stories about motherhood, complicated families, and the decisions that get made when writing a memoir.
• Helen Ellis (Southern Lady Code) was hilarious in conversation with comedian/novelist Lorna Landvik, definitely the highlight of my weekend. Her stories about her mother were so great.

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. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and welcome to another week of amazing nonfiction reads! I spent the weekend at a book festival — more on that later this week — so feel like I’m a bit behind in even trying to figure out what’s coming out this week. But, I’ve still got three great books to highlight and several more to mention. Let’s dive in!

---

Sponsored by The Blink of an Eye: A Memoir of Dying—and Learning How to Live Again by Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard

It was New Year’s Day. Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard, a young mother and scientist, was celebrating when she was struck down with a sudden fever. Within hours, she’d suffered organ failure and was clinically dead.

Brought back to the edge of life—trapped in a near-death coma—she was given a 5% chance of survival. She awoke to find herself completely paralyzed, with blinking as her sole means of communicating. The Blink of an Eye is Rikke’s gripping account of being locked inside her body, and what it took to relearn every basic life skill, to truly live again.

---

Once More We Saw Stars by Jayson Greene – In this memoir, Jayson Greene reflects on the tragic and accidental death of his two-year-old daughter, the hope and healing he finds after, and the importance of love and partnership.

Further Reading: In Oprah Magazine, Greene shared 10 songs of significance for their family.

Mind and Matter by John Urschel and Louisa Thomas – By the time he was 13, John Urschel was taking college-level calculus. In high school. He found a love of football, ultimately finding a way to follow both his loves to a position on the Baltimore Ravens and the pursuit of a PhD at MIT.

Further Reading: Urschel wrote a piece for the New York Times about how math teachers should be more like football coaches, demanding commitment and accountability from students.

Surprise, Kill, Vanish by Annie Jacobsen – Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen shares the story of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, “a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world.”

Further Reading: Jacobsen was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in history for her book The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency.

And finally, a few more books coming out this week that might be of interest:

• Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson
• Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban
• Out East: A Memoir of a Montauk Summer by John Glynn
• Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
• The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility by Robert Zubrin
• Transformed: A Navy SEAL’s Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds by Remi Adeleke

Hello and happiest of Fridays, fellow readers! This week we learned that Barack Obama’s highly-anticipated memoir likely won’t be out until 2020. One journalist, citing “a person familiar with the writing process,” broke the news on Twitter. USA Today also reported that the publisher, Penguin Random House, began “alerting foreign partners” about the status of the book.

---

Sponsored by Always Smile by Alice Kuipers from KCP Loft

Seventeen-year-old Carley Allison had it all. She was on the edge of fame as a singer and was reaching for the highest levels as a competitive skater. Her world came crashing down when she was diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer in her trachea. Faced with an uncertain future, Carley rose to the challenge and performed on television for an audience of millions. Now her memory lives on in the countless people she touched with her courage. Bestselling author Alice Kuipers weaves their stories together with the blog Carley kept in the final months of her life and her personal rules for living well in the worst of times.

---

I’ve been listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama, where she talks a bit about the process Barack used writing his previous books – time alone, writing in long-hand on yellow legal pads. If that’s how he’s approaching his post-White House memoir, I can see it taking quite some time. And if it does come out in 2020, it’ll likely land right in the middle of the campaign. More to come on this one, I fully expect.

With that, let’s move on to some other interesting news of the week:

Ruth Reichl is a treasure, and her recent By the Book column in the New York Times is wonderful. The authors she mentions are varied and interesting, and her proposed slate of seven dinner party guests is a list I can totally get behind. Read it!

Nicole Chung is writing another book! I absolutely loved her first memoir, All You Can Ever Know, so I am thrilled to hear she’s writing more. The book is still untitled, but will be an “examination of class, grief, and healthcare inequality,” which sounds amazing.

Roxane Gay is everywhere and it is awesome. In addition to a podcast, she’s also hosting a book club that “might be on your TV this summer” and launched a new magazine on Medium. I am extremely intrigued about both. And speaking of a podcast, the first episode of Hear to Slay dropped this week. I’m still not totally clear on the platform they’re using, Luminary, but I think the first episode is available for free.

The collected speeches of a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist will be released as a book next month. Greta Thunberg began a worldwide school strike for the environment last year, and has since been a noted speaker. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference includes 11 of her speeches. All of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to charity.

Daniel Halpern, publisher at Ecco and friend of the late Anthony Bourdain, was interviewed by Grub Street about their relationship and Anthony Bourdain Remembered. In the interview, he talks about the idea behind the book – originally a gift from CNN to Bourdain’s family that’s being published with their blessing. It’s a really thoughtful interview.

It’s been a great week of news! 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

Greetings, nonfiction fans! It is a truly bananas week of new releases, everything from memoirs about long-distances horse races to an investigation into domestic violence to a look at what’s new in the world of paleontology. So let’s end the preamble and jump in!

---

Sponsored by Crossing on Time by David Macaulay

David Macaulay, co-creator of the international bestseller The Way Things Work, brings his signature curiosity and detailing to the story of the steamship in this meticulously researched and stunningly illustrated book. Prior to the 1800s, ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean relied on the wind in their sails to make their journeys. But invention of steam power ushered in a new era of transportation that would change ocean travel forever: the steamship. Framed around the author’s own experience steaming across the Atlantic, Crossing on Time is a tour de force of the art of explanation and a touching and surprising childhood story.

---

Dear Scarlet by Teresa Wong – A graphic memoir about a woman’s struggle with postpartum depression, written as a letter to her daughter.

The Castle on Sunset by Shawn Levy – A definitive history of the Chateau Marmont, Hollywood’s “most iconic, storied, and scandalous hotel.”

No Walls and the Recurring Dream by Ani Defranco – A memoir by a singer-songwriter, activist, and feminist.

Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer – An 18-year-old impulsively signs up for the world’s longest and most difficult horse race… then inexplicably wins.

Furious Hours by Casey Cep – The story behind Harper Lee’s only piece of nonfiction, an account of the murder trial of a vigilante in Alabama.

Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang – “A history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad.”

A Craftsman’s Legacy by Eric Gorges and Jon Sternfeld – A celebration of craftsmen, looking at the values of makers and what they can teach the rest of us.

At Home with Muhammad Ali by Hana Ali – A family memoir a legendary boxing champion told through the eyes of his daughter and aided by personal recording and family journals.

Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton – A look at how our understanding of dinosaurs is being transformed by new fossil finds and new technology.

New Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby – Twenty-five years after the original Daughters of Africa anthology, this follow up collection explores sisterhood, generational links, and the obstacles faced by female writers of color with essays by 200 women writers.

Riding the Elephant by Craig Ferguson – A memoir in essays by a comedian and former late night television host on fatherhood, Scotland, and beating the odds.

The Killer Across the Table by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker – A book by the criminal profiler who was the inspiration for Mindhunter that dives into four disturbing and complex cases.

No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder – An investigation into the scope of domestic violence in the United States and how it connects to other major social issues.

The Man They Wanted Me to Be by Jared Yates Sexton – A memoir about the current state of masculinity, including “the personal and societal dangers of the patriarchy.”

The Unspeakable Mind by Shaili Jain – A cartography of PTSD that shines a light on an epidemic that affects more than six million Americans.

Upheaval by Jared Diamond – “A new theory of how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don’t.”

The Guarded Gate by Daniel Okrent – A look at “how the rise of eugenics helped America close the immigration door to ‘inferiors’ in the 1920s.”

The Goodbye Diaries by Marisa Bardach Ramel and Sally Bardach – A mother and daughter share two sides of the story after a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Hello and happy Friday nonfiction friends! I am so excited that we finally got some book reviews of The Mueller Report, and they are amazing.

---

Sponsored by Scribd

In 1978, Harper Lee’s fame had reached a fever pitch following the remarkable success of her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she had written little of consequence in the nearly two decades since. She was searching for her next book when the perfect story landed in her lap. A call from back home in Alabama lit the match: A reverend — described as “six-feet-four-inches of majesty and dread” — allegedly murdered five of his family members, without detection. Each time, he got rich off their life insurance policies but reaped no consequences. Vanity Fair’s special correspondent, Mark Seal, retraces the legendary novelist’s return home to Alabama to chase down a true crime mystery for the ages in THE DEVIL AND HARPER LEE.

---

Slate book critic Laura Miller compares the report to Game of Thrones, in the sense that “palace intrigues make for addictive storytelling.” She goes on to say “reading the report as a work of literature makes clear that the narrator of the document, whoever that may be, relishes a little bit of that now and then.” Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada argues the book is too long and a little flat, but also “the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency,” showing a “mix of incompetence, disorganization, and self-interest.”

So good, so good. I want to read the report now. But before then, we’ve got some nonfiction news from the week. Let’s dive it!

Barack and Michelle Obama’s slate of Netflix shows have been announced! Higher Ground, the former First Couple’s production company, will “create content that embodies the core values of celebrating the human spirit.” Planned products include a biopic about Richard Williams (father of Venus and Serena Williams), a documentary about an Ohio factory, a biopic adaptation of Frederick Douglass, a nonfiction series based on The Fifth Risk, and more. Click through and read the article, the entire slate is amazing!

Julie Andrews is writing a second memoir! The book will focus on her time in Hollywood, following up on her 2008 memoir about her childhood. Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years will start right as she’s preparing to film Mary Poppins and be out on October 15. Another fun fact – she wrote the book with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton.

There’s a trailer for the Toni Morrison documentary! It has a ton of great quotes, which Jezebel helpfully pulled out in this article. Check out this one: “Navigating a white, male world wasn’t threatening. It wasn’t even interesting. I was more interesting than they were, and I wasn’t afraid to show it.” 🔥

Let’s get inside the National Spelling Bee! New York Magazine interviewed Shalini Shankar, author of Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success. She talks about how she came to this topic, the impact of immigration on the Bee, and how the Bee has changed over time to get more competitive.

Well, that’s a good collection of articles (if I do say so myself)! 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

Greetings and salutations, nonfiction nerds! Even though it’s officially May 1, we’ve got one more blockbuster week of April new releases to get excited about. This week’s new releases cover socialism, Sicily, spelling bees, and more — let’s check it out!

---

Sponsored by Scribd

In 1978, Harper Lee’s fame had reached a fever pitch following the remarkable success of her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she had written little of consequence in the nearly two decades since. She was searching for her next book when the perfect story landed in her lap. A call from back home in Alabama lit the match: A reverend — described as “six-feet-four-inches of majesty and dread” — allegedly murdered five of his family members, without detection. Each time, he got rich off their life insurance policies but reaped no consequences. Vanity Fair’s special correspondent, Mark Seal, retraces the legendary novelist’s return home to Alabama to chase down a true crime mystery for the ages in THE DEVIL AND HARPER LEE.

---

All That You Leave Behind by Erin Lee Carr – After her father (journalist David Carr) died unexpectedly, Erin Lee Carr began to revisit their entire correspondence – nearly 2,000 items – to see what comfort and lessons she could find there.

 

 

The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara – Writer Bhaskar Sunkara looks at the history of socialism from the mid-1800s and shows how it offers a way to “fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism” in the 21st century.

 

 

From Scratch by Tembi Locke – A young woman falls in love with an Italian chef, but his family objects to his marriage to a black woman. After years of estrangement, the family reconciles in the wake of a cancer diagnosis, and the woman finds comfort and healing at her mother-in-law’s table.

 

 

Beeline by Shalini Shankar – An anthropologist uses the lens of the National Spelling Bee to explore Generation Z (kids born after 1997) and their families, exploring the major life skills the competitors develop and the impact of immigrants and immigrant families on this age group. This one is really fun so far.

 

Mama’s Boy by Dustin Lance Black – A memoir by a filmmaker and activist about his conservative Mormon mother and how they managed to bridge the gap between his sexuality and her faith.

 

 

 

And with that, I’ll round out this newsletter with five more books to put on your radar:

• Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime by Julian Guthrie
• What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence, edited by Michele Fildate
• Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff
• African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard
• No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by Daniel J Kennefick

Happiest of Fridays, fellow nonfiction nerds! I have to admit, I don’t really have books on my mind right now – I’m totally fixated on getting to see Avengers: End Game tomorrow night with friends. If you’ve seen it already, no spoilers!

This week’s nonfiction news feels a bit like a buffet and includes an essay about one of my very favorite things about reading nonfiction. Scroll on to find out what!

---

Sponsored by PodX, a first year podcast convention brought to life by the makers of LeakyCon and BroadwayCon

Do you want to learn more about how podcasts are made? Network with other fans, and meet your favorite podcasters? PodX is the podcast convention you’ve been waiting for! Meet the voices behind your favorite podcasts like Undisclosed, The Bright Sessions, True Crime Obsessed, Oh No Ross and Carrie and many more May 31st to June 2nd in the heart of Nashville at The Music City Center. Tickets are on sale now at podx.com/riot.

---

The Music Memoir of My Dreams – I’m from Minnesota, so I’m required to love Prince. But even if I wasn’t, I’d be excited about the news that the memoir Prince was working on at the time of his death will be published on October 29. According to Variety, The Beautiful Ones will “combine Prince’s unfinished manuscript with rare photos, scrapbooks and lyrics.”

Special Counsel Reports – I think there’s going to be some interesting stories coming out soon about The Muller Report as a book, both in its impact on publishing and the narrative it shares. I haven’t read any that quite get at that yet, but I did enjoy this piece from the Washington Post looking at “odd American literary genre: reports by special counsels and select congressional committees on presidential wrongdoing.”

Speaking of Musician Memoirs – Singers Tegan and Sara are also coming out with a book! High School, out September 24, “tells their coming-of-age story: growing up in Alberta, Canada, grappling with their sexuality, and facing the pressures of adulthood as the end of adolescence loomed.”

For the Joy of Subtitles – For Real podcast listeners know that I am a sucker for a great book subtitle. I just love them SO SO MUCH. That might be why I enjoyed Mary Laura Philpott’s essay in LitHub titled “Why, Exactly, Do We Have Subtitles In Books?” The idea that subtitle is a book’s middle name made me laugh, and makes me appreciate them all the more. Her new book I Miss You When I Blink: Essays is charming too.

Parenting Hacks from a Cartoonist – I really like reading about how people get things done, so I’ve got all of Lifehacker’s “How I Work” series in my feed reader. This week I learned they also do a “How I Parent” series, which is less applicable to me personally, but one of the recent parents in the series is cartoonist Lucy Knisley (Kid Gloves), and her interview is totally charming.

Top Nonfiction (So Far) – Last week, Goodreads released their list of the top nonfiction of the year so far, based on both anticipation (adds to Want to Read shelves) and buzz (average reader ratings). The top three books on the list are three I haven’t read: Maid by Stephanie Land, Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis, and Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig.

And with that, I wish you well as you slide into your weekend. May it be filled with many books and plenty of time to read them. 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, nonfiction friends! It seems like, perhaps, the deluge of new books for April is starting to calm down. Sort of? Or maybe not — I still have nine new books to mention this week. Let’s just get right into it.

---

Sponsored by The Book of Delights, essays by Ross Gay, from Algonquin Books.

Ross Gay, one of today’s most dynamic literary voices, spent a year writing daily essays about things that delighted him. With enthusiasm and thoughtfulness, the essays record the small joys that occurred in one tumultuous year, the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. He finds wonder in the mundane, celebrates beauty in the natural world, and takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities of his life, including living in America as a black man. Share the delight of The Book of Delights for Mother’s Day.

---

Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales by Oliver Sacks – This is the last collection of essays we’re going to get from Oliver Sacks, and that really bums me out. In this volume, Sacks shares essays on “ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer’s.”

 

Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting by Anna Quindlen – Anna Quindlen is such a gem, I can’t even stand it. In this collection, she writes all about being a grandmother and her new role, “no longer mother and decision-maker but secondary character and support to the parents of her grandson.”

 

The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live by Heather B. Armstrong – This one sounds so fascinating. In 2016, Heather Armstrong elected to participate in an experimental treatment for depression wherein she would be put in a chemically induced coma to approximate brain death for 15 minutes… 10 times! Gah!

 

D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose – Lady spies! This is a book about the women recruited by Britain to help spy for the allies and help lay the groundwork for the D-Day invasion.

 

 

The Heartland: An American History by Kristin L. Hoganson – After moving to Illinois after teaching at Harvard and living in Washington D.C., Kristin Hoganson wanted to better understand the making of the modern heartland and the myths that have popped up about America and the Midwest.

And we’ll close with four additional books coming out this week that seem like good reads:

• Dante and the Early Astronomer: Science, Adventure, and a Victorian Woman Who Opened the Heavens by Tracy Daugherty
• Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity by Jamie Metzl
• The Last Job: The “Bad Grandpas” and the Hatton Garden Heist by Dan Bilefsky
• The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates

There are so many new books! 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