NF November Week 2: Choosing Non-fiction

The topic for this week is: choosing nonfiction.

What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If so, share a title or cover which you find striking.

I haven’t ever really given this much thought, so it was interesting to sit down and try to figure it out. There are a few things that come to mind when I think back on how I’ve chosen my non-fiction reads.

• One way of picking up a piece of non-fiction, for me, is the serendipitous way that a book will sort of make it’s way in front of me. Maybe it’s a topic I’m interested in, and I see it come up on Goodreads a couple of time because some of my friends are reading it. Or, I’ll listen to a podcast and it will be mentioned. Or, and this is especially true of narrative non-fiction, a particular book can just be everywhere, all at once. This is how I ended up reading Killers of the Flower Moon, which has now been adapted to film. I came across it on GR, and, as well, I had a friend in my “real” life who was reading it, who really sold me on it.
• But, there are also a lot of times that I get interested in a topic from a piece of fiction, or a specific author, which will lead down the rabbit hole of non-fiction. I have some posts already drafted to talk about this “book pairing” process, because that’s the theme for next week, but one example of this would be my love of WWI, interwar & WWII British women’s fiction, which is what caused me read The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson, and to seek out war diaries, like A Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain and Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson.
• Unlike fiction, where I am an unapologetic cover hound, I don’t really think that covers or titles influence me when I’m picking non-fiction. It’s all about the theme or the content.

When it comes to themes or topics, I can’t get enough of:

• Bibliomemoirs. I love them so much that I think I will probably write one at some point, just for myself. And, in a way, isn’t a book blog just a long form, endless bibliomemoir? I love to read about other bookish people and their reading experiences.
• Cult memoirs: I am strangely fixated by books written by (especially women) authors who have escaped from authoritarian or fundamentalist religious organizations. I went through a month or so a couple of years ago where I basically mainlined them like heroin. Maybe this is because, as a godless heathen, reading about fucked up religious experiences (that too often seem to involve actual sexual abuse) makes me feel better about my choice to leave religion behind as a young woman.
• Golden age mystery: I love vintage, Golden Age mysteries (especially Agatha Christie), so I love picking up pretty much anything that goes behind the scenes of those authors, publishers, books, etc. Martin Edwards, in particular is brilliant at this (The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, The Golden Age of Murder and Life of Crime are all exceptional, and are TBR exploders) and , but I also really enjoyed John Curren’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, Poirot by Mark Aldridge, David Suchet’s Poirot and Me, and A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup. I also read Lucy Worsley’s new Christie biography Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman in April and loved it. If I see a new book on this topic, I buy it. Immediately.
• History: I have a range of historical topics that interest me – far too many to list here. Suffice it to say that if I want to read something non-fiction, I’ll often turn to a time period or historical event that intrigues me and find a book to match it.
• Narrative non-fiction: especially around social justice, environmental, or social history issues.

That’s not all, but that’s enough for now!