2017’s Nonfiction November is hosted by Katie at Doing Dewey, Lory at Emerald City Book Review, Julie at Julz Reads, and Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness!
This final week is hosted by (Lory at Emerald City Book Review)
Which amazing non-fiction books have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book!
Here is a sampling of the books I’ve added to my TBR througout this event:
Julie @ Julz Reads Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
Raidergirl @ An Adventure in Reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Eva @ The Paperback Princess Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Yongue
Susie @ Novel Visits Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
JoAnn @ Lakeside Musing Grocery by Michael Ruhlman and Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook
Sarah @ Sarah’s Book Shelves What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan
This week, I’ve also started reading Sherman Alexie’s new memoir, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.
Inspired by his interview with Eleanor Wachtel, on CBC Radio’s “Writers & Company”, this is a book which I knew I wanted to buy in hardcover.
The journey he undertook in writing this painful and reflective work is remarkable. The following passage introduces readers to his mother.
“My late mother, Lillian Alexie, crafted legendary quilts and was one of the last fluent speakers of our tribal [Spokane] language. She was small, just under five feet tall when she died. And she was so beautiful and verbose and brilliant she could have played a fictional version of herself in a screwball Hollywood comedy if Hollywood had ever bothered to cast real Indians as fictional Indians.”
He is clear to say that his memory is unreliable, that he as a narrator is unreliable, and, yet, these admissions of his subjectivity only draw me in the narrative further and more quickly.
This is another instance in which an author whose fiction I have enjoyed pulls me into non-fiction. But I did say, when the month began, that I have a tendency to fall into writers’ memoirs, so this is reading in my comfort zone. It is, nonetheless, immediately engaging and evocative, qualities which many readers appreciate in non-fiction as well as fiction.
Is there some non-fiction in your reading stack just now?
I hope you enjoy this memoir. I’ve not read anything by Sherman Alexie but he’s one of those writers I keep thinking I should discover!
I’ve got a long list of those too and, meantime, many of them are writing more and more while I am not reading their books (Kim Stanley Robinson, China Mieville, Ann Leckie, etc.)!
I’m actually reading “Marian Engel: Life in Letters” right now. Is it weird that I haven’t read any of her novels yet?
I don’t feel like there is much chance of major plot spoilers with Engel’s stuff. And it’s so intriguing that you find the work interesting even without having read her before!
Nonfiction November has expanded all of our tbr lists. Now if we can just read them all before next year. Grocery and Tomatoland were both very good reads… hope you enjoy them, too!
Hah! Before next year? Maybe for the handful of titles I listed here, but for all the non-fiction I’ve added to my TBR lately? Maybe in five years!
I’ve heard of Sherman Alexie but not read anything by him. This memoir sounds wonderful. I would have put it on my TBR immediately too.
I adored Sherman Alexie’s memoir, I’m sure you will too! What a powerful piece of writing…
I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it that much, Anne! Have you heard any of the interviews he’s done for “promotional” purposes (he halted the process somewhere along the line, so there weren’t too many)? I was moved to tears, which always surprises me with radio stuff.
Lab Girl is very good! Hope you enjoy it when you get to it.
I also want to read the Alexie memoir. Memoir in general is very much my nonfiction comfort zone. I am trying to branch out into more historical and scientific nonfiction. I would like to, anyway!
I was expecting it to feel very memoir-y, but it actually just feels very Sherman-Alexie-ish. And that’s a good thing!
I’ve read both the Younge and the Vance, very cunningly displayed beside each other in my local bookshop. Both excellent but best read when cheerful. I’m looking forward to starting Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin.
Oh, no: I have no shortage of books to be read while feeling cheerful. laughs (And that’s not a cheerful laugh either!) Flaneuse looks like something I would enjoy as well. Have you read Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit? It seems they might make a good pair.