Where is your nonfiction section please.
Hello and welcome: Happy first day of Nonfiction November! I'm your host this week for the kickoff, and I could not be more thrilled. Here's our topic: Week 1: (November 1-5) – Your Year in Nonfiction with Rennie at What’s Nonfiction: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions... Continue Reading →
I'm still slowly trying to get back into the writing-about-books swing of things! Did I mention we moved New York apartments the month before moving German apartments? Yeah, I'm still fucking exhausted. And I've been reading a lot more slowly but still reading, and although I have no brainpower for full reviews, here are some... Continue Reading →
With the year half over, let's see what new and wondrous upcoming nonfiction we have to look forward to in the coming months! Here's what I'm excited for: The Icepick Surgeon : Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science, by Sam Kean (July 13) - Beginning "with Cleopatra’s... Continue Reading →
Super Sick: Making Peace with Chronic Illness, by Allison Alexander These problems may be manageable for a short time. But when they keep happening, when there's no bright horizon of "getting better" to look forward to, I feel like I'm a cup continually poured out and never refilled. Being sick for a long time or... Continue Reading →
Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients, by Robert Pearl My desire [... ] isn't to castigate the culture, belabor its shortcomings, or embarrass individual doctors. Instead, my hope is to improve healthcare delivery in our nation, evolve physician culture, and restore the joys that have been stripped from the profession. Robert... Continue Reading →
Self-help is not my thing whatsoever. When I started this blog, it was with the intention to show how much nonfiction actually encompasses beyond areas like self-help. When telling people I only read nonfiction for years, I often got that response: that I must read a lot of self-help. Um, no. I'm perfect. But seriously,... Continue Reading →
Psychiatry, prison-camp manufactured Chinese goods, and racist tales from Nebraska. What a grab bag today. Let's dive in! Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, by Roy Richard Grinkerpublished January 26, 2021 by W.W. Norton Only recently did mental illnesses brand the whole person, not just his or her behavior, with what['s...]... Continue Reading →
Interestingly, three new books are out this month addressing scientific definitions of life and its hazy boundaries in some way. I've read them all. (What a contemplative time it's been, for better or worse.) Let's discuss! Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul, by... Continue Reading →
Book review: Gory Details, by Erika Engelhaupt Beyond satisfying my own weird inquisitiveness, the larger goal of Gory Details has always been to create a place where it's OK to talk about gross, taboo, or morbid topics -- and then to examine them, up close, through the lens of science. Science writer and editor Erika... Continue Reading →
An unexpected benefit of lockdown (we have to take little joys where we find them) has been getting to virtually snoop through people's bookshelves in Zoom meetings. Some journalists have done the good work of putting together lists of titles they've spotted on shelves during interviews. Dr. Fauci's books made it into one of these... Continue Reading →
Dr. Seema Yasmin is an MD, epidemiologist, and former disease detective with the Centers for Disease Control (cool job alert) who works in health journalism, doing what NHS doctor Ben Goldacre has implored other doctors and scientists to do: "translating" dense medical studies and scientific data so that the general public can more easily understand... Continue Reading →
I've got a roundup of new nonfiction that's especially heavy on mysteries, medicine, and magic. Onward! The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370, by Florence de Changy -- Le Monde journalist de Changy investigates the "Kafkaesque" March 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I watched an episode of Drain the Oceans about this... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 