Tag Archives: Nonfiction

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Non-Fiction Books I’ve Read Lately

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I love this topic and nonfiction in general.

No matter which corners of this genre you might like, there are books waiting there to be discovered.

My nonfiction preferences usually gravitate towards biographies or autobiographies, zoology, medical topics, food, history, and prehistory, but I will jump around to many other subjects, too, if the blurb sounds interesting.

Here are some nonfiction books I’ve recently finished and enjoyed:

Book cover for Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid. Image on the cover shows a newspaper photo of Medgar and Myrlie Evers marching in a civil rights parade. Above it is a black and white snapshot of this couple sitting comfortably on a couch together in a living room. She’s wearing and dress and he’s wearing a suit. His arm is around her as he glances at her with a loving expression on his face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid

Book cover for Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women  by Pashtana Durrani Image on cover is a photograph of the author wearing a white headscarf and a gorgeous red and yellow dress that flows around her body loosely and modestly. She is smiling slightly in this photo.

What I Thought of It:  Ms. Durrani is a good storyteller. I appreciated how detailed her descriptions were of life in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the many ways she has worked to make it better for the women and girls living there. Some of the most interesting scenes to me were the ones that described the tension between her and her parents. They love her and completely support the education of girls and women, but they also had some legitimate reasons to be very concerned about how vocal she was about the oppression in her country given how violent the Taliban is. She could have so easily ended up being murdered like Medgar Evers was.

 

 

Book cover for reams: Brief Books about Big Ideas by Melanie Gillespie Rosen. Image on cover shows the word dreams breaking up into different pieces and floating away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreams: Brief Books about Big Ideas by Melanie Gillespie Rosen

What I Thought of It: I wish it were longer and included more details about why we have the dreams that we do. It was thought-provoking, though.

 

 

 

Now onto some nonfiction books I’m either currently reading or plan to start reading soon. If any of you have read any of these, I’d sure like to hear what you thought of them:

 

Book cover for Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir by Terry Galloway. Image on cover shows the author as a preschooler. They are dressed in a cowboy outfit including boots and hat and are holding a comically large violin as they stand on a flat, dusty expanse of land. There are several houses far in the distances behind them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir by Terry Galloway

What It’s About: The author’s life growing up as a deaf member of the LGBTQ+ community. The first chapter has been wonderfully funny so far, so I’m hoping the rest will be just as memorable.

 

Book cover for You'll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love by Marcia A. Zug. Image on cover shows five pictorams: a baby carriage, a ring, a bag of money, and a passport.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love by Marcia A. Zug

What It’s About: Like the title said, this is about the history of people getting married for reasons other than them falling in love with each other. I believe it will cover arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, and similar topics, but I have not yet had the chance to crack it open.

 

Book cover for The Secret History of Bigfoot by John O’Connor. Image on cover is a gorgeous painting of trees growing in a lush and green woods. They are growing so closely together that the background quickly fades into a dark, leafy place where little sunlight can penetrate the forest floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Secret History of Bigfoot by John O’Connor

What It’s About: While Bigfoot is mentioned in this book, of course, I believe it’s mostly meant to be a study of the different sorts of people who are so interested in this topic they will do things like attend cryptozoology conferences or go out into the woods and try to find evidence that Bigfoot is real.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Memoirs Written by Women


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A pink dried flower that is lying on the blank white page of an opened book. Here’s a quick heads up before I jump into today’s post. Long and Short Reviews is hosting a virtual party on their site this week to celebrate their 16th anniversary. If you’d like to learn about new indie and small press books in a wide variety of genres or win one of the gift certificates or other great prizes, click on the second link in this paragraph and read some of their guests posts to find out how to enter the drawings.

Okay, onto Top Ten Tuesday stuff now.

The genre topic I picked for this week’s freebie post is memoirs written by women.

I enjoyed all of these books and would recommend them to anyone who likes memoirs or who wants to learn more about the lives of these incredible women and girls.

1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou’s Autobiography, #1) by Maya Angelou

3. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

4. I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai

5. Educated by Tara Westover

6. Becoming by Michelle Obama

7. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

8. Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s by Jennifer Worth

9. Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

10. Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Documentary I Liked

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A photo of a dinosaur skeleton against a black backrgroudn. The skeleton has been pieced back together and is standing up straight and tall as if the dinosaur is still alive. You all may remember how much I like nonfiction. I enjoy watching documentaries about science, history, medicine, and other topics just as much as I do reading about them.

I think documentaries are the perfect thing to watch whenever you need a distraction for any reason. You can learn so much about the world through them!

I’ve been anticipating this week’s topic so much that I’m going to give two answers to it. (Honestly, I wanted to give like a dozen…but I won’t overwhelm all of you with my enthusiasm for documentaries).

 

 

I recommend Prehistorical Planet to dinosaur fans age 5 and older

Poster for season two of the documentary Prehistoric Planet. It shows a close-up drwaing of a dinosaur’s eye. The dinosaur has blue feathers and a yellow-brown iris. You can see the reflection of a flying dinosaur in this dinosaur’s eye which is cool.Prehistoric Planet is a 2022 and 2023 British-American miniseries about what life was like for dinosaurs and other animals in the Late Cretaceous period. It’s based on the latest scientific research of that era and was filled with information about how those creatures hunted (or tried to avoid being hunted), found mates, built nests, and raised their young.

If there are any elementary-aged or older kids in your lives who love dinosaurs, this is something they can enjoy just as much as adults do. The second season just came out in May, and the writing felt like it was meant to appeal to viewers from a wide variety of ages and backgrounds which is delightful. This one is for everyone!

 

I recommend Shiny Happy People to teen and adult viewers only.

Poster for the documentary Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. Image on cover shows a photo of the Duggar Family that has a happy smiley face covering the actual face of every single member of the family.

Shiny Happy People is a 2023 documentary about the Duggar family and their relationship with the Institute of Basic Life Principles which was founded by Bill Gothard.

The Duggars have been a staple of reality TV programs on The Learning Channel since the early 2000s due to their frugal lifestyle and having 19 children.

They cultivated a wholesome image, but there were years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse going on behind the scenes both in this family and in Gothard’s organization in general.

This was not an easy thing to watch by any means, but it was educational. I especially appreciated the sections that pointed out some of subtle signs people can inadvertently give off when they’re being abused but trying to hide it as other programs on this topic will often only mention the biggest red flags of something like that going on.

There were so many people who could have reported these crimes but either never did it or were not listened to when they did. I think there’s something to be said for being aware of what to look for and alerting child protective services when warranted. Sometimes it takes more than one report for the authorities to take action.

Anyway, these are the two most recent documentaries that I loved. I hope you all like them, too, if you watch them!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Book Genre and Why

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A stack of about a dozen books sitting next to a white wall. All of the book’s spines are facing away from the viewer so we don’t know their topics or authors. The best I could do was to narrow my answer to this week’s prompt down to two different answers.

I’ve loved the speculative fiction genre since I was a little kid. Whether it was paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, or something similar to one of these categories, I adore stories about things that aren’t actually possible in our world.

Some of the oldest speculative fiction stories out there have predicted things like travelling to the moon or cell phones that were the stuff of dreams during their eras but are now perfectly possible and even ordinary in certain cases.

On the other side of the spectrum, I’ve grown to love nonfiction as an adult.

Biographies and memoirs give us intimate glimpses into the lives of others and often include insight into how they surmounted even the most difficult circumstances.

History class was often a little boring when I was a kid, so it was thrilling to grow up and learn about the many historical figures and events that my teachers either never talked about at all or only went into scantest details about before moving on to yet another war or royal dynasty. (Kudos to those of you who enjoy reading about royalty and/or war, of course! They’re simply not my cup of tea).

I try to keep Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge posts brief, so I’ll only mention one other type of nonfiction that excites me. It’s marvellous to learn about new scientific discoveries and advancements in any number of fields as well.

Sometimes books are written about archeological discoveries, medical advancements, or distant celestial bodies that we’re still gathering information about. Occasionally, a scientist might write an entire book about a species like eels or earthworms that we’ve recently discovered a whole bunch of fascinating information about.

I devour all of these these books with gusto. The real world can be just as filled with wonder and excitement as any imaginary one in a faraway magical land  if you pay close attention!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The Best TV Show from 2021

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The retired astronaut Leland Devon Melvin posing with his dogs for his official NASA photo in his spacesuit. I watch many excellent science fiction series, so this answer was a little surprising. A nonfiction miniseries won out over the the many works of fiction I could have selected instead!

Dogs is a Netflix miniseries that released its second season in 2021. Each episode follows the lives of different dogs as they provide companionship, work alongside their humans, or do extraordinary things.

Leland Devon Melvin is the name of the astronaut in the photo accompanying this post. His loving relationship with his two dogs was explored in-depth in one of the season two episodes as they prepared for a long and difficult hike, and it brought a tear to my eye.

It’s incredible to see just how much joy and meaning dogs bring to people’s lives. The rest of the stories in this series were also interesting for a wide variety of reasons, from the journey of a young girl who has severe epilepsy and was getting her first service dog to the tireless work of animal rescue groups who save countless lives and so much more.

This is one of those wholesome series that I think should appeal to a wide audience. There’s something for everyone in it no matter how old or young you are.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favorite Nonfiction Authors

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

There’s something about summer that makes me want to read nonfiction. I still read science fiction, fantasy, and similar genres, but I really enjoy learning about things that really happened.

Here are several of my favourite nonfiction authors. How many of them have you all read?

Barack Obama.

Example: Dreams From My Father.

Why I liked it: President Obama had an interesting childhood for more reasons than I should put into a single blog post. To mention just one of them, I would have been hurt if my father had played such a small role in my daily life when I was growing up. I was impressed by how understanding he was about the role his father did play in his life.

Stephen Hawking.

Example: A Brief History of Time.

Why I liked it: Physics is one of those topics I have a hard time wrapping my mind around but still enjoy reading about quite a bit. Please don’t ask me to give you a full explanation of why time doesn’t always move consistently (especially when those pesky black holes get involved), but I did always enjoy hearing his thoughts on this topic when he was still alive.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Example: Nickle and Dimed: on (Not) Getting By in America

Why I liked it: Ms. Ehrenreich has a conversational writing style that works well for her investigative approach to nonfiction, social justice, and social class. I’m also impressed by the fact that she’s spent so much time literally walking in other people’s shoes while researching her books.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Example: We Should All Be Feminists

Why I liked it: The older I get, the stronger my preferences becomes for writers who know how to get to the point as succinctly as possible. Not only does Ms. Adichie do this, she manages to pack a lot of important information into the things she writes without simplifying it too much. I also appreciate her inclusive approach to social justice. It’s so much more effective to call people in to caring about injustice than it is to call them out for not using exactly the right term(s) while trying to make the world a better place.

Stephen Colbert

Photo credit: Montclair Film.

Example: I Am America (and so Can You!) 

Why I liked it: Satire is such an underrated form of comedy, especially when it’s done well. I adore Mr. Colbert’s tongue-in-cheek approach to everything, especially once I learned that he apparently teaches Sunday School in real life and allegedly has been banned from acting like the persona he plays on television when he’s at home relaxing with his wife. Seriously, how funny is that? She must be such a patient woman.

Michael Pollan

Example: In Defence of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Why I liked it: I always appreciate Mr. Polland’s simple and intuitive approach to eating. No food or food group is forbidden. Instead, we’re all encouraged as much as is possible to eat the sorts of unpackaged ingredients that our ancestors would have recognized.

That is, roast a whole potato instead of eating french fries. Pack an apple instead of an apple-flavoured fruit rollup.  The closer something is to the way it was when it was still growing in the field, swimming in a pool of water, or running around in a pen, the better it is for you in the majority of cases.

This is the sort of healthy eating that really speaks to me. I’m always excited to see what he’s written next.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2019 TBR

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

As I mentioned in last week’s Top Ten Tuesday post, my TBR list depends a lot on when I reach the top of the request list for the various library books I’m in queue for.

Based on the ratio of requests to library copies of these books, I believe they will all become available for me over the next two to three months. There is a lot of nonfiction coming my way this summer if all goes as planned. I’m excited about that.

You’ll notice that a few of these titles won’t be available until September. I decided to count anything that I expect to have my hands on before the official end of summer at the autumn equinox since southern Ontario typically remains quite hot, humid, and summer-like until late September or early October.

Title: They Were Her Property: White Women and the Economy of American Slavery by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

I hope to have it: Any day now.

Why I want to read it: I don’t know much about the role wealthy white women played in slavery in the American south. I’m incredibly curious to learn more about that.

 

Title: 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do by Amy Morin

I hope to have it: In the first week of July

Why I want to read it: I’m intrigued by the feminist spin to this self-help book and would like to see what connection she makes between the #MeToo movement and taking charge of your own destiny. Those aren’t topics that I’d necessarily ever think to join together.

 

Title: On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

I hope to have it: In the second week of July.

Why I want to read it: I loved her first book, The Hate U Give, and after mentioning this one on several Top Ten Tuesday posts I’m quite excited to finally see if On the Come Up will be as thought-provoking. It’s been such a long wait that I can hardly believe I’m finally almost at the top of the library queue for it.

 

TitleOnce a Wolf: The Science Behind Our Dogs’ Astonishing Genetic Evolution by Bryan Sykes

I hope to have it: In the second week of July

Why I want to read it: Sometimes when I see someone walking around with a tiny little dog here in Toronto I like to imagine how a wolf would react to being stuffed into a purse or dressed in a tutu.  On a more serious note, I love dogs and have often wondered how humans took something as gigantic and fearsome as a wolf and gradually bred that gene pool into toy poodles and chihuahuas. Learning more about this is going to be a great way to spend part of my summer.

 

Title: Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller

I hope to have it: In the first week of August.

Why I want to read it: Psychology fascinates me in general. I studied attachment theory in a few of my college courses, and I’m curious to see if there’s any new research on the various types of attachment and how they affect you in adulthood.

 

TitleInvisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

I hope to have it: In the second week of August

Why I want to read it: As a short and petite woman, I’ve had some struggles adjusting to stuff that is designed for “average” people that are much taller and bigger than me. For example, some chairs are too big and high off the ground for me to sit in while also touching my feet to the floor. I’ve had issues with seatbelts not quite fitting me properly, too, which could be really dangerous in a crash. It’s going to be super interesting to find out why so many designers make cisgender men the standard instead of taking a wider variety of body sizes and shapes into account.

 

 

TitleWhy We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths—And How We Can Stop! by Bill Eddy

I hope to have it: In the third week of August.

Why I want to read it: With a federal election coming up here in Canada this autumn and another federal election coming up the United States, my birth country, next year, I’m quite interested in why voters in many different countries can become so enamoured with Narcissistic politicians.

 

TitleCharlotte: A Novel by David Foenkinos and Sam Taylor

I hope to have it: In the first week of September

Why I want to read it: World War II was such a horrific war. This book of poetry was written about one of the many innocent people who died in a concentration camp during the course of it. I’d never heard of this painter before, and I’d like to know who she was before her life ended far too soon.

 

TitleThe Ghost Garden: Inside the Lives of Schizophrenia’s Feared and Forgotten by Susan Doherty

I hope to have it: In the second week of September

Why I want to read it: While they don’t have this specific diagnosis, there are a few people in my life who live with serious mental illnesses that have very negative impacts on their daily lives. I’m always on the lookout for books that talk about this topic, especially if they explore the lives of people who are not high functioning.

This is a sensitive and difficult issue, but I think there needs to be much more awareness of the many different ways mental illness can impact someone’s life. Some people absolutely can and do cope well with their illnesses. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for everyone.

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The Evolution of My Reading Habits

My reading habits have evolved a lot over the years. In today’s post, I’m going to start with my earliest memories and share some stories about how my interests and habits have changed over time.

Most of these genres are still things I like to read at least occasionally. With that being said, I do not read the older ones as often as I once did.

Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales

“A Fairy Tale” by J. H. F. Bacon

The first genres I ever fell in love with were nursery rhymes and fairy tales.

My uncle had a book of fairy tales that he left behind when he went off to college. I read that collection every time I visited my grandmother’s house, and it made me yearn for more stories about dragons, royalty, and people who were rewarded for the good things they did when they thought no one was paying attention.

The tales in my uncle’s collection were the sorts of things you’d see in a Disney movie. They were missing the dark endings that they’d often originally had.

A few years later, I began stumbling across fairy tales that didn’t always end happily ever after. For example, the original version of “The Little Mermaid” ended with the main character’s death instead of her wedding.

I did go back to preferring the more cheerful spins on these stories after a while, but I appreciated having those glimpses into what had happened to them before they were cleaned up for modern audiences.

30 Books in a Month

As I’ve mentioned here before, I was homeschooled for the first several years of my education. One of the best parts of that experience was being able to read after my lessons were finished. There were times when Wyoming was far too snowy and cold of a place for a child to be wandering around outside in, so I read the entire afternoon and evening away on some of those wintry days.

All of this reading time had an interesting effect on me once I started public school and people who weren’t my parents or siblings began noticing my habits.

My fourth grade teacher once gave us an assignment to read three books a month. We were supposed to turn in little slips of paper with the title and author of what we read to her so she could keep track of them for us.

Reader, I didn’t finish three books that month. I read thirty of them.

Those three slips of paper we’d been given were almost immediately replaced by notes from my mother listing everything else I’d read after I fulfilled the original requirements.

When our teacher announced the number of books each student had read that month a few weeks later, most of my classmates were in the single digits. It was pretty funny to see how they gasped when they realized I’d quietly blown everyone out of the water.

A Passion for Poetry

I no longer remember which genres I read during that thirty-book month, but I do remember the genre I became obsessed with shortly after that: poetry.

My fifth grade teacher did a unit on the many different types of poems out there, and I took to this topic  immediately. A lot of the stuff she had us read reminded me of the nursery rhymes I’d loved a few years earlier.

Shel Silverstein was the first poet I loved, but I quickly moved on to poets who wrote for adult audiences like Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes.

The thought of compressing what could be an entire story into a few short lines impressed me. I was always excited to find poets who could create strong imagery of what they were describing to the audience while using as few words as possible.

There was about a decade there when poetry was regularly part of what I read for fun. For a long period of time after that, I still returned to it regularly when I needed a break from other genres.

I’m slowly losing interest in this genre, and that makes me a little sad. I wish I could find the same thrill in it I did twenty years ago.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

“Martians vs. Thunder Child” by Henrique Alvim Corrêa.

My interest in the science fiction and fantasy genres has always been intertwined with the other things I’ve read. Long before I entered high school they became genres I returned to over and over again.

While I do take breaks from science fiction and fantasy to recharge sometimes, those feelings have remained constant to this day. No other genre has managed to keep me coming back for more for as long or as consistently as these two have.

There is something so interesting about taking a modern trend and extrapolating it to some distant future where robots really do run the world or when climate change has altered our planet so much that future generations can no longer imagine what life was like in a cooler, more stable climate.

I’ve come to prefer hopeful speculative fiction over the darker, apocalyptic stuff, but I think I’ll continue reading some sort of sci-fi or fantasy for many years to come.

Leaning Towards Nonfiction

Over the last decade or so, I’ve found myself gradually becoming more interested in nonfiction than I ever was before. My favourite high school English teacher used to talk about how much she enjoyed reading about things that really happened.

I didn’t understand why she’d say that at the time, but now I relish the opportunity to read books about history, astronomy, archeology, ecology, medicine, the biographies or autobiographies of people who have accomplished all sorts of things, and many other topics.

We live in a world that is filled with more information than any one person can digest in a lifetime. I accept the fact that I can’t learn everything, but I also want to be exposed to as much knowledge as possible in this lifetime.

How have your reading habits evolved over time? If anyone decides to borrow this topic and blog about it, I’ll edit this post to include a link to your response if you’re interested in that.

Edited on May 5 to add Bjørn Larssen’s response.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Non-Fiction Releases for the First Half of 2019

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

When I’m not reading the science fiction and fantasy genres, non-fiction is something I love diving headfirst into. Thus far, it looks like 2019 is going to be an amazing year for all sorts of non-fiction titles, from biographies to sociology and so much more!

1. Influenza: The Quest to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History by Jeremy Brown

Release Date: Today

2. Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life by Kim McLarin

Release Date: January 15

3. What We Talk About When We Talk about Rape by Sohaila Abdulali

Release Date: January 26

4. No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History by Dane Huckelbridge

Release Date: February 5

5. Becoming Emily: The Life of Emily Dickinson by Krystyna Poray Goddu

Release Date: February 5

6. Louisa on the Front Lines: Louisa May Alcott in the Civil War by Samantha Seiple

Release Date: February 26

7. Bats: An Illustrated Guide to All Species by Marianne Taylor

Release Date: April 9

8. Beyond Words: What Elephants and Whales Think and Feel by Carl Safina

Release Date: April 23

9. The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas.

Release Date: May 21

10. Dissenter on the Bench: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Life and Work by Victoria Ortiz

Release  Date: June 4

Are you planning to read any of these books? What books are all of you looking forward to over the next six months or so?

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Saturday Seven: Books That Might Give You Cravings

Saturday Seven is hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

I’m a pretty quiet person in real life. One of the topics that I always like to talk about with anyone who is interested, though, is food. For example, I might ask you what your favourite food is or talk about a delicious meal I made last week. This week’s list is all about books that gave me cravings when I read them.

1. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.

I could almost do an entire Saturday Seven post on Michael Pollan’s books alone. I really appreciate the fact that he takes such a well-rounded approach to figuring out what and how humans should eat from a nutritional, environmental, and cultural perspective. Then you also need to factor in any medical restrictions (diabetes, food allergies, interactions with certain drugs, etc) you might have on what you can eat.  The answer won’t be exactly the same for every person or geographical region on Earth. I like the flexibility of that. It makes me hungry! Hehe.

 2. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver.

Imagine spending an entire year trying to eat nothing but food you’ve either grown or bought from people who lived nearby. It’s not something I could do year-round in Canada without risking vitamin deficiencies from barely having any vegetables or fruit to eat for months on end, but I do follow many of this author’s principles when the weather allows for it. And now I’m craving Ontario-grown strawberries. They’re mouthwateringly delicious, and they’ll be in season in a few short months.

3. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

Salt is common and inexpensive now, but it used to be so valuable that it was used as a form of currency. This is the kind of book I’d only recommend to people who are extremely interested in this topic. It wasn’t a light, fluffy read at all, but it did make me crave salty foods like homemade soft pretzels.

4. French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano.

I loved the common sense messages in this book about moderation, fitting walking and other forms of exercise into your daily routine, and never being afraid to enjoy what you eat. There’s something about this easy-going approach to life that makes me look forward to my next meal regardless of what it happens to be.

5. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel.

When I first read this a decade ago, I wondered if I’d live to see the day when the Cavendish banana went extinct. It hasn’t happened yet, and I sure hope it never does. Doesn’t the banana on the cover make you wish you could eat a banana right this second? That sure was my reaction to it.

6. Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook.

This actually made me seek out one of those old-fashioned tomatoes that hadn’t had so much of its flavour bred out of it. It was really good. If only that kind of tomato wasn’t in season for such a short time. I could go for one of them right about now.

7. Tea: The Drink That Changed the World by Laura C. Martin. 

I drink a decent amount of caffeine-free herbal tea, especially during the winter when I want to warm up. If caffeine didn’t make me so jittery, I’d branch out and try more of the teas that this author talked about. They sounded delicious.

Do you read nonfiction books about food or beverages? What are you craving right now?

 

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