Ease me back into reading

May 1, 2022 3:40 PM

I plan on doing a digital detox in the near future, and I need a book to help me keep the screens away. I'd like to read something that is nonfiction, accessible, will leave me feeling positive or hopeful, and isn't about any single political/social issue. Any suggestions?
posted by Chuck Barris to Media & Arts (21 answers total)

It depends very much on what you're interested in, but Mary Roach's books are fun, funny, and well-researched. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, are my favorites.
posted by gideonfrog at 3:54 PM on May 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

Consider Connections by James Burke, a fascinating history of inventions and their unintended consequences.
posted by SPrintF at 4:29 PM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons Robert Sapolsky is interesting, funny, thoughtful, a good read, that has stuck with me.
posted by theora55 at 4:36 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you’re into media, Tiffany Haddish, Mindy Kaling, and Lilly Singh all have great memoirs that are funny and inspiring.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 5:19 PM on May 1, 2022

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
posted by sk932 at 5:47 PM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

If you're interested in (auto)biographies (probably too much of one topic):
Song in a weary throat by Pauli Murray
Until I am free: Fannie Lou Hamer's enduring message to America by Keisha Blain
posted by lab.beetle at 6:27 PM on May 1, 2022

I really enjoyed Into the Rip, by Damien Cave, in which a father/journalist moves from the US to Australia and notices that the local approach to risk is different. The thread running through the book is the ocean: his kids start swimming lessons because all the kids in school are in Sunday morning lessons, and the kids are tossed about by the waves, and are taught to respect the water and to accept that sometimes it is challenging and difficult. He eventually takes swimming lessons himself. The book weaves in ideas of how attitudes to risk - not just around parenting but in many facets of life as well - have shifted in recent years, explores the why, and concludes that it hasn't been great for us.
posted by lulu68 at 6:58 PM on May 1, 2022

Accessible is definitely subjective, but some good reads (and decently sized so you don't finish them in a couple of hours):

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe - "a breathtaking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space"

The Invention of Nature by Andreas Wulf - "Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infested Siberia. He came up with a radical vision of nature, that it was a complex and interconnected global force and did not exist for man's use alone. Ironically, his ideas have become so accepted and widespread that he has been nearly forgotten."

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin - " A provocative work that explores the evolution of emotions and personal relationships through diverse cultures and time. "An intellectually dazzling view of our past and future."--Time magazine "

The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl - "On a primitive raft made of forty-foot balsa logs and named Kon-Tiki in honor of a legendary sun king, Heyerdahl and five companions deliberately risked their lives to show that the ancient Peruvians could have made the 4,300 mile voyage to the Polynesian islands on similar craft. "
posted by underclocked at 11:41 PM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

So you don't have to go Out There where it's wet and cold read:
Outpost by Dan Richards. Q. What would you do if your father, an artist and explorer, returned from Svalbard just a month before your birth smelling of pemmican and bringing a polar bear pelvis found detached on the open ice?
A. Why, of course, you'd grow up to become an artist and explorer yourself.

The Arbornaut by Meg Lowman [eponysterical because she is, for preference, high in the canopy and started her career as a rare woman in a man's world]. I posted about her on The Blue in Jan.

Time on Rock: A Climber's Route into the Mountains by Anna Fleming is in the footsteps of Nan Shepherd cited by sk932 above. And indeed, Anna cites Nan for helping to give her a more contemplative and less conquistador view of Britain's high places. It is okay, it is better, just to be in the hills and forget all that macho goal-driven Munro-bagging triumphalism. Nan Shepherd was born about 100 years before Anna Fleming; so the mantel has been passed by proxy and importantly by writing. Fleming is an Eng.Lit. major with a PhD [Thesis: ‘Wordsworth, Creativity and Cumbrian Communities’(2017)], so has a good idea about how to construct a lucid and evocative sentence.

Fleming? Have to try Brazilian Adventure [1933] by Peter Fleming, older brother of Ian 007 Fleming. The funniest, most laconic and least pretentious travel book you are ever likely to read. Unless you follow up with A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush [1958] by Eric Newby. If you like your upper lip to be stiff while reading, these are the chaps to follow.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:21 AM on May 2, 2022

I too was coming into to recommend Mary Roach, but Fuzz is my pick.
posted by snaw at 3:44 AM on May 2, 2022

At Home by Bill Bryson, blurb follows: "a fascinating history of the modern home, taking us on a room-by-room tour through his own house and using each room to explore the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture"
posted by Harald74 at 4:02 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Seconding How To Do Nothing. More about the author here.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 5:01 AM on May 2, 2022

Thirding How to Do Nothing. Read it during my own digital detox and it was the perfect thing.
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 5:37 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

i'm reading one summer: america, 1927 right now by bill bryson. it is surprisingly good and interesting and attention-keeping for mostly so far being about lindbergh and baseball.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 8:30 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, a history of the Great Migration. It is about racism and the immense barriers faced by Black Americans, and has in-depth interviews with a handful of everyday people whose stories show incredible perserverance and bravery. It left me feeling more connected and more empathetic - it also reads like a novel!
posted by lizard music at 9:03 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

and Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In is coming out in paperback. very moving, interesting memoir of a Vietnamese immigrant, who, with his parents, left as refugees shortly after the war ended. Highly recommend. Helped me break a reading drought with great enjoyment.
posted by theora55 at 9:17 AM on May 2, 2022

If nature is more your thing, I can't recommend The Forest Unseen highly enough. David Haskell has deep knowledge about all the natural sciences, and explains everything in a way that is interesting, thorough, and at times poetic. He covers things I've always wondered about (like why birds have different songs) and things I wonder why I never wondered about them (like the role of ants in pollination).
posted by DrGail at 9:27 AM on May 2, 2022

Braiding Sweetgrass by Kimmerer

Entangled Life by Sheldrake

Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America, by Childs

Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World , by Druett
posted by RedEmma at 12:10 PM on May 2, 2022

Another one: The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart, blurb: "Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley, tequila from agave, rum from sugarcane, bourbon from corn. Thirsty yet? In The Drunken Botanist, Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol over the centuries."
posted by Harald74 at 4:32 AM on May 3, 2022

A lot of John McPhee's books do this for me, especially those focusing on people. I recommend:

A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton
Levels of the Game (about Arthur Ashe)
The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden of Deerfield
Giving Good Weight (somewhat shorter works, including one about the Greenmarket and one about an amazing chef)

Also, Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin is amazing and wonderful.
posted by kristi at 8:26 PM on May 4, 2022

Well, I really enjoyed the Book of Delights by Ross Gay. It's a book of short essays, each one about a small delight over the course of a year. It's not untouched with sorrow, but it does find the joy there too. I read it in 2020 and it was quite the companion that year.
posted by blueberry monster at 7:14 PM on May 5, 2022