Nonfiction November I

By -
Well, I'm already late to the party, but why not participate anyway?  This week's question, hosted by Kate of Doing Dewey is:

 Your Year in Nonfiction: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?


 First I had to look back and see what nonfiction I've read this year.  I thought it wasn't very much and that I'd been doing a lot of fiction.  While I think I really have read less nonfiction this year, there has still been plenty.  I read travel, history, art, language, home organization, and literary criticism, and right now I'm reading about the needs of preschoolers.  So I've got plenty to talk about!


Favorite nonfiction read of the year: This is a very tough question.  I adored The Art of Dress; it pushed every happy button I've got.  History!  Fabric!  So did Home Fires, about the Women's Institute in WWII.  I love those topics.  But Up From Slavery was truly inspiring, and so was Man's Search for Meaning. 


Nonfiction book I have recommended the most: That would be either The Art of Dress again or The Broken Road, the third in a travel trilogy. 

A topic I haven't read enough about yet: history!  I have several massive history tomes on my shelf, including The Cold War and Gulag, that I haven't yet gotten to.  This has been a very Russia/Cold War year for me; I've read two Gorky memoirs, Escape From the Soviets, and Revolutionary Days, among others.


What do I want out of this event: Inspiration to read more, and recommendations (since my TBR isn't huge enough, ha).





Comments

  1. LoryNovember 4, 2016 at 2:21 PM

    I want to reread Man's Search for Meaning, since the first time was when I was a callow and ignorant high school student. I'm going to revise my Classics Club list in the new year and that will be on it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousNovember 4, 2016 at 5:18 PM

    Is there even such a thing as reading enough about history? If I read nothing but history books all year, I still wouldn't feel like I'd read enough of it! That said, I absolutely haven't read enough history this year. I want to do better next year!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more