Where is your nonfiction section please.
Editor Natalie Eve Garrett's Eat Joy was an essay collection I adored: well-known writers from a spectrum of backgrounds and genres writing about their favorite comfort foods, or what that concept meant to them. Her latest curated collection The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone follows a similar... Continue Reading →
I've been in the mood for these lately! It started with a visit last fall to the Sammlung Scharf Gerstenberg, a collection of surrealist art close to our Berlin apartment. In the bookshop there I found Desmond Morris's The Lives of the Surrealists. Morris, a painter (and zoologist!) himself, is one of the last surviving... Continue Reading →
Melissa Febos' Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative is both memoir and guidebook, and a meditation on what life writing does for us and the importance of it to women and underrepresented groups. Febos is the author of several works of memoir and autobiographical fiction, and although I haven't read her before, she's... Continue Reading →
Given my obsession with Indian food and curries of all kinds it only seemed fitting to learn more about them. Madhushree Ghosh's memoir-in-essays Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family (April 4, University Of Iowa Press) weaves together fragments of her life, both brighter and darker ones, loosely linked through food. It includes... Continue Reading →
Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties, by David de Jong (published April 19, 2022 by Mariner Books) In the newly released and fairly jaw-dropping Nazi Billionaires, Dutch journalist David de Jong, a Bloomberg News reporter on wealth and finance, profiles five German-Austrian families (the Quandts, Flicks, von Fincks, Porsche-Piëchs, and Oetkers) whose... Continue Reading →
We're living, famously, through a time in which we have trouble connecting with others, especially outside our "tribes." And Keltner's work shows us that sadness--Sadness, of all things!--has the power to create the "union between souls" that we so desperately lack. Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World... Continue Reading →
Sometimes you learn of some bit of history you've never heard of that's so monumental, it's hard to believe. Incredible how some major events slip by without notice on the world stage of history while others, even more minor, become common knowledge. The Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970 is one such event that I think... Continue Reading →
Genealogy research through affordable DNA testing has been a popular topic in nonfiction lately, as it is in the news in general, I suppose. I made genetics-related nonfiction the subject of a Nonfiction November Expert Week post two years ago. Two recent memoirs by women look at different aspects of heritage and identity, taking their... Continue Reading →
Australian-American author Sarah Krasnostein's lates,t The Believer: Encounters With the Beginning, The End, And Our Place in the Middle, is such a difficult book to do justice to. Nominally, it's about some of the oldest storytelling topics of love, death, and how we occupy the present, told through the author's "journey to discover why people... Continue Reading →
It's been a dark few weeks in the world, hasn't it? Everything still feels surreal, and the news brings fresh horrors every day. I try to keep this blog solely book-related, but of course the world doesn't compartmentalize so neatly. It feels worthwhile right now to point people towards some books that can help to... Continue Reading →
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma, by Stephanie Foo Hatred, I learned quickly, was the antidote to sadness. It was the only safe feeling. Hatred does not make you cry at school. It isn't vulnerable. Hatred is efficient. It does not grovel. It is pure power. Reading the new memoir... Continue Reading →
Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything, by Kelly Weill - Used or new @ SecondSale.com Conspiracy theories help us feel safe by providing an explanation for things that feel incomprehensible and beyond our control. Daily Beast journalist Kelly Weill takes a deep dive into what I think must... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 