Nonfiction November: My Year in Nonfiction

For Nonfiction November, our first topic is to look at our year in nonfiction. This week’s topic is hosted by Heather at Based on a True Story.

My favorite types of nonfiction are memoirs, legal/political issues, racial and gender issues, nature, and food and travel. Last year I read quite a bit about mental health, healing, and self-improvement.

My nonfiction reading really decreased, only 8 compared to 19 at this time last year. I also haven’t done very well completing the 12 categories in Book’d Out’s Reading Nonfiction Challenge. I can’t explain the decrrease, other than to say it’s been a challenging year. I’ve had to learn all kinds of new things this year, about Parkinson’s and health care and assisted living. So maybe I was less inspired this year to learn about new things.

This year, on the food and travel topic, I read Unpacking for Greece and Justice is Served. And I’m planning to read Savor, by Fatima Ali. South to America is travel but really history, and Justice is Served is also historical, about the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So I guess I really like books that cross topics.

Some of the best books I read this year fall into a category I’d call “survival stories”. The Last Girl by Nadia Murad was incredible, as was The Choice by Eva Eger and What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. These are the books I find myself recommending the most.

I also loved The World Record Book of Racist Stories by Amber Ruffin and Lacey LaMarr, as much as their previous book, You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey. I usually read a lot more about racial issues. South to America is another one, but I’m surprised there were only two.

The only nonfiction read I was somewhat disappointed with was South to America. I really liked the idea of the book. Author Imani Perry makes a road trip through the South to her native Alabama, and considers its history and how the racial history of the South is really the history of the U.S. as a whole. What I didn’t love was the anecdotal feel of it; while I appreciated the author’s personal connections to the South, the book felt disjointed to me, and I wanted more structure. Of course, Ruffin and LaMarr’s books are also anecdotal and unstructured, but those books are told with humor and felt very different (despite having similar subjects).

And the last (and my first chronologically) is a nature read, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elizabeth Tova Bailey, a very contemplative book about the lives of snails. It was a perfect nature read and very calming.

I was very surprised to learn that The Postcard is a novel rather than memoir, since nearly all of it is based on facts and the author, Anne Berest, is writing about herself and her family. I think novelization allowed her to take some liberties with places and dialogue, but it still reads very much like nonfiction. I do enjoy books that are mostly true but have some fictional elements, and this was a fascinating story/memoir about a family exploring its history during the Holocaust. It’s an excellent companion to The Choice.

I’m looking forward to picking up a lot more recommendations this month! Will you be joining Nonfiction November? Please let me know if there’s a nonfiction title you’d recommend.