Non Fiction is Fun Too: A List

Just as fiction isn’t just mass-market paperbacks written by people with phony names in poorly selected fonts, non-fiction isn’t as awful as reading terms and conditions agreements or watching war movies. I have read more non-fiction books this year than the rest of my itty bitty life combined. Of course, I only read non- fiction books that have brightly colored covers categorized as “humor” or “essays” or “sociology,” not “biography” or “books my Dad would like” (aka U.S. History) or “science.” But still, these are not books about figments of people's imaginations! I’m growing up. Not really, because true, real, honest, imaginative, fun, good adults read fiction. But I needed to pepper in some real people in my literary consumption. Also, it is really fun to read books by people that are a. alive and b. you could follow on Instagram ( this goes for fiction too, but shh).

Blurbs on the backs of books are often BAD. If you read the blurb of a YA book, then you literally have no chance of getting over the stupid-ass names of the love interests, because the plot is boiled down by some intern that does their blurb work in the first two hours of their day and then chills in their cubicle until five o’clock. Sometimes, though, those half-hearted blurbs - they save us because a lot of times those books are just not cute. I have accumulated a list of my favorite recent non-fiction reads with a blurb that details things that I actually do care about along with a pull-quote from myself about said book because narcissism:

ESSAYS:

1. Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino is an obvious one, but I love it so it must be typed to be read by your eyes. Each chapter is like unwrapping a little chocolate of insight about the complexity of our current culture that you digest and think about for weeks. I was underlining entire paragraphs. It’s naturally funny too. Tolentino scrutinizes our online behavior, uncovering layers of performance of how we portray ourselves and how that has ramifications in our actual perception of ourselves and others in an essay called “The I in the Internet.” Self-Delusion! Another essay titled “Pure Heroine” (thank you, Lorde) is an absolute takedown of literary heroines in how our best spiky, bold, and sincere heroines are little girls, but when they grow up they are mollified into traditional roles. And adult-age heroines are still alienating, because the character rosters are mostly white women. “I Thee Dread” sings a specific song of assurance to why all my fears about marriage are ENTIRELY rational and that weddings often feel superficial. Also, ideas in“ Ecstasy” about the connection between religion and drugs circulate through my brain about once a month since I read it last year.

To summarize, Goodreads Caroline said:

“Tolentino really made me think about how even encouragement and acceptance of good things like the self and modern feminism are double-edged in that now these things are being exploited for money, essentially packaged for profits instead of discovery. (And because of “Always be Optimizing” I now think athleisure is subtly evil.)”

1. Notes to Self by Emilie Pine is a Shannon recommendation that made my eyes waterfall tears while I was on an airplane, enduring the humiliating experience of being a person with emotions in a very public place. The book is the Irish author’s first collection of personal essays. Pine’s stories slice your heart open, fill the cavity with water, and place you in a rowboat to force you to row down the river of hurt that flows through the human heart. She really just spills out her personhood onto paper. So yeah, I hid behind the book so my airplane rowmate wouldn't offer me a Kleenex. The entire book leads to a triumphant reckoning of self-acknowledgement. The language is positioned in first person which was so effective in that all the “I” statements got into the grooves of your heart, allowing you to empathize easily with the author, but also recognize the author of a similarly painful story as yourself.

To summarize, Goodreads Caroline said:

“Pine showed how wrenching & winning it is to be human.”

1. wow, no thank you by Samatha Irby is Irby’s third collection of humor essays. It is indeed humorous. I had a lot of fun reading it aside from the chapter she details her hysterectomy in which I wanted to pass out, because I can’t deal with surgery as a concept or that other humans besides me bleed. I usually hate it when celebrities answer normie q’s about their problems which they send in via voicemail or call-in on podcasts, like that concept is truly horrifying and embarrassing for everyone involved, especially me. Buuuuttttt, Irby answers anonymous questions about people’s love lives in an essay called “Love and Marriage” which was glorious. I laughed and laughed instead of crying while eating a sad takeout dinner in my car in the parking lot of Luna Grill. She maintains that everyone is boring, so just accept one another or break up. I loved the chapter called “Season 1 Episode 1” about being a staff writer on a TV Show for Hulu (Shrill). The whole book is random hilarity. Basically, I read this book and felt better that every human is a stupid human being, so me being stupid is just me being human.

To summarize, Goodreads Caroline said, “The mantras of ‘who cares?’ and ‘everyone is boring’ were grounding and hilarious in juxtaposing a seemingly suave attitude while acting increasingly awkward. Same.”

1. Wordslut by Amanda Montell, a linguistic foray into the subconscious sexism embedded in our language, was endlessly interesting. There were also fantastic illustrations by Rose Wong that visualize Montell’s ideas in such smart and charming ways. Montell was also a frequent footnote user, a woman after my own heart. The history of pejorative terms was wild and concerning. The attention to crediting the Black and the LGBTQ communities with our best slang, and other topics like: vocal fry, grammar correction, and hedging were thoughtful and provided context and rationale, emphasizing the importance of careful speech. Her tracing of slang showcases that young people revolutionize language generation after generation, proving that language gradually shifts the paradigm in reflecting societal values. I tried explaining how the title is an example of using terms subversively to undermine their meaning to my family, but I don’t think they understood based on the number of times “wordslut” was thrown around out of context. We’re working on it.

Goodreads Caroline said: “This book is basically an exclamation point of the times I was angered, shocked, and thrilled by the way we talk.”

1. How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell.

Odell’s research details the fulfillment of connection with nature, yourself, and community with others, especially in this age of distraction, anxiety, and media always clamoring for your attention and wallet. She writes, “I look down at my phone and wonder if it isn’t its own kind of sensory-deprivation chamber. That tiny, glowing world of metrics cannot compare to this one [nature], which speaks to me instead in breezes, light and shadow, and the unruly, indescribable detail of the real.” Her essays cover topics of connection to the existence of being, rather than doing, in “The Case for Nothing,” where she beautifully describes serene hours spent at the Rose Garden in California. In “The Impossibility of Retreat” essay, Oddell understands that you cannot not totally detach yourself from society, but you can create a “third space,” a harbor that is outside yourself but inside society. Odell effectively resituates the concept of productivity, and left readers inspired to discover the plants and people that make up their environment.

Goodreads Caroline said: “The best part of the book was gaining insight on how Odell perceives the world with deep ecological care. She traced the landscape of her hometown of Oakland to discover it’s history, following paths of dried-up rivers that she had little reference to in her childhood memories. The crows she leaves peanuts out for on her porch. Her interest in the earth cycles, gathering rainwater and painting watercolors with it.”

NOT ESSAYS:

1. American Fire by Monica Hesse is a True Crime story about serial arsonists in Accomack, Virginia in 2012. Hesse is a journalist and author of YA historical fiction. As a journalist, her experience as a novelist fleshes out facts with researched human details that tie to philosophical observations and salient descriptions to round out this fascinating story. As a novelist, her journalism experience equips her with research skills and informs her protagonists with journalistic-like curiosity and desire for truth. I don’t love true crime stories, because they glorify horrific human acts for entertainment and even worse, these are real people’s lives that these stories affect. Arson, though, is not quite as insidious but relishes in the inflammatory. Combining the premise with previously enjoying Hesse’s writing in Girl in the Blue Coat, I was eager to read this book. The characters, the setting, the motives were all intricate and thoroughly examined. Thrilling. Captivating. All the adjectives you want in this kind of story.

Goodreads Caroline said: “The wide-lens exploration of the abandoned nature of rural life as a whole provided necessary scope to crimes fueled by the specificity of place. The awareness of metaphor of a dilapidated structure made incendiary to be applied relationally, economically, and thematically was a guide throughout the narrative.”

***Please enjoy, and support local bookstores, never Amazon. And let us know your thoughts about any of the books we’ve recommended. Just wait until I get all 6 readers of this site to read poetry on a regular basis too. Evil laugh.***