Non-fiction reading for the agnostic soul
February 15, 2018 6:35 PM Subscribe
This year I've gotten into reading non-fiction, self help, memoirs type books. I am interested in recommendations of non-fiction books. I have been living under a rock, so please recommend super popular things. I am a feminist, liberal, agnostic looking for engaging reads. They could be from other backgrounds if they are uplifting, engaging, and/or thought provoking. Best reads of the year for me so far are: Designing your life; How full is your bucket; Let's take the long way home. Please recommend me more non-fiction to feed my soul.
Totally out of the self-help genre, but I've recently picked (back) up David Quammen's Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, which is neither as boring nor as fraught as it sounds. Quammen is one of my favorite science writers from way back, and his prose is as lucid as it is casual and engaging. Between media and work it's hard to get my head out of some very grim places, but reading about the correspondence between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace or the speciation of giant tortoises beyond Galapagos has been a balm and a boon to my well-being.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 7:28 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 7:28 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari, is a biography of the modern human race, and goes at length about the imagination we have which permits us to organize ourselves into much greater institutions than the ~120-person tribes we are biologically inclined to fit ourselves into. It's a terrifically thought-provoking read, but it is at times unsettling with some bald reminders that everyone has sacred cows, and at the same time, the fire of knowledge must be fed. Unsettling but never troubling as such; our self-delusions are as much a human trait as our gigantic brains and opposable thumbs. We aren't the only humans to have walked the Earth, but as yet we are the fittest.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:59 PM on February 15, 2018
posted by Sunburnt at 10:59 PM on February 15, 2018
Elyn Saks -- The Centre Cannot Hold (My Journey Through Madness)
Saks an amazing woman, an outstanding human being, she has lived with schizophrenia and lived a huge life, and wrote a great memoir telling us about it. Along with Jamison, she goes long as a proponent of the benefits in the psycho-social approach to helping people who have serious mental illness, which is to say psychotherapy along with psychiatry; let's not just address the illness with psychiatric medications but also support them as they walk a road that is not an easy one.
I can't recommend this book highly enough.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:08 PM on February 15, 2018
Saks an amazing woman, an outstanding human being, she has lived with schizophrenia and lived a huge life, and wrote a great memoir telling us about it. Along with Jamison, she goes long as a proponent of the benefits in the psycho-social approach to helping people who have serious mental illness, which is to say psychotherapy along with psychiatry; let's not just address the illness with psychiatric medications but also support them as they walk a road that is not an easy one.
I can't recommend this book highly enough.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:08 PM on February 15, 2018
The best feminist non-fiction books I've read in the past year:
- Hunger, by Roxane Gay
- Shrill, by Lindy West
Hunger is much more depressing, but also incredibly raw and true and thought-provoking.
posted by barnoley at 5:16 AM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
- Hunger, by Roxane Gay
- Shrill, by Lindy West
Hunger is much more depressing, but also incredibly raw and true and thought-provoking.
posted by barnoley at 5:16 AM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Brene Brown’s work would scratch the self-help itch and has intersectional feminism as a theme.
Shonda Rimes Year of Yes is affirming, too.
posted by childofTethys at 6:07 AM on February 16, 2018
Shonda Rimes Year of Yes is affirming, too.
posted by childofTethys at 6:07 AM on February 16, 2018
Best answer: Mary Karr's 1995 classic memoir The Liar's Club combines a compelling (though sometimes traumatic) story with brilliant writing. It's often credited with starting the flood of memoirs published in the last few decades.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on February 16, 2018
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on February 16, 2018
I like Simon WInchester's books Long-winded, veddy British, encyclopedic -- the audiobooks are great, too. For example, there's one about the great San Francisco earthquake, and one about the men who mapped the American west, and one each about the Pacific and Atlantic oceans -- and within that topical boundary, he talks about EVERYTHING.
Bill Bryon's "One Summer" (and several of his other books, like "Home") is another book that covers a lot of stuff that relates to a subject. In this case, it's all about the year 1927 and how it contained the great flood of the Mississippi, Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight, Babe Ruth's season, and...I forget what all else. It's a door-stop, no doubt, but it carries you along. He also does his own audiobooks, and I like his voice.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:44 AM on February 16, 2018
Bill Bryon's "One Summer" (and several of his other books, like "Home") is another book that covers a lot of stuff that relates to a subject. In this case, it's all about the year 1927 and how it contained the great flood of the Mississippi, Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight, Babe Ruth's season, and...I forget what all else. It's a door-stop, no doubt, but it carries you along. He also does his own audiobooks, and I like his voice.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:44 AM on February 16, 2018
I've been reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Alyssa Mastromonaco's Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? about her time in the Obama administration.
Seconding Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
posted by pianoblack at 8:03 AM on February 16, 2018
Seconding Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
posted by pianoblack at 8:03 AM on February 16, 2018
Hunger by Roxane Gay is wonderful.
I loved When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.
posted by BibiRose at 8:23 AM on February 16, 2018
I loved When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.
posted by BibiRose at 8:23 AM on February 16, 2018
The Last Lecture - by Randy Pausch
Pausch was a popular professor at Carnegie Mellon when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He gave a lecture generally about life lessons, and this book is an adaptation of that lecture. As such it's a quick read, and you might imagine that because of his health, it might be sad, but it's actually beautiful, often funny, and utterly inspiring. I find myself remembering some of the lessons from it on a regular basis. It was wildly popular when it came out, too.
posted by leticia at 10:10 AM on February 16, 2018
Pausch was a popular professor at Carnegie Mellon when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He gave a lecture generally about life lessons, and this book is an adaptation of that lecture. As such it's a quick read, and you might imagine that because of his health, it might be sad, but it's actually beautiful, often funny, and utterly inspiring. I find myself remembering some of the lessons from it on a regular basis. It was wildly popular when it came out, too.
posted by leticia at 10:10 AM on February 16, 2018
I really like reading So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. There are memoir bits along with advice and how to lists.
posted by Margalo Epps at 3:58 PM on February 16, 2018
posted by Margalo Epps at 3:58 PM on February 16, 2018
We Are All Shipwrecks: “an exquisitely written tale of perseverance and unconditional love” - if you like uplifting memoir, this fits the bill, without being cloying or cliched.
posted by devinemissk at 6:48 PM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by devinemissk at 6:48 PM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks is a totally gorgeous exploration of different words for natural phenomena and landscapes. Like, did you know there are words for the hole a hedgehog leaves in a bush or the light that sparkles off an icicle? He weaves together really fun lists of words with beautiful accounts of various writers, artists, explorers and meditations on natural landscapes. I was so utterly moved by it. I spend a lot of my research area dealing with climate change, and it was a really affirming corrective to the literature of doom I normally consume.
I'm currently reading forester Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees which examines the way trees communicate with and support one another. It can be a touch anthropomorphic for my tastes, but it's a very cherry, sweet, and totally soothing book to read.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:56 PM on February 20, 2018
I'm currently reading forester Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees which examines the way trees communicate with and support one another. It can be a touch anthropomorphic for my tastes, but it's a very cherry, sweet, and totally soothing book to read.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:56 PM on February 20, 2018
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The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
All of these are sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting, always engaging.
posted by scorpia22 at 7:23 PM on February 15, 2018