My Personal Non-Fcition Reading Challenge

[Dark Muse]

Though I have always had an interest in history I have always found it difficult to get myself motivated to read works of Non-Fiction. The problem for me is that even though the subject of the book may be interesting when non-fiction writing always feels like reading non-fiction. I do not deny that there are quality works non-fiction and good non-fiction writers but because of the nature of non-fiction itself, the fact that it deals with actual facts, dates, etc.. it is hard to completely escape at least a tale tale "text book" feeling.

Because Non-Fiction writers do not have that creative licence as fiction writers, non-fiction does not have the same ability to truly captivate and draw the reader into the story (at least for me) that fiction has. It is hard to escape that feeling of being lectured to.

But because I do enjoy learning knew things, love history and like to expand my reading I have decided to become more pro-active in reading more works of Non-Fiction. In one of the groups I belong to on Goodreads they have a TBR challenge, in which every year you create a list of 12 books you want to read, and everyone who finishes all 12 of their books by the end of the year is placed in a drawing to win an online gift certificate to the bookstore of their choice.

So I have decided that I would always add at least one work of non-fiction to my list. This year, though I have not yet read it ( I am going to before the years end) I have added Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser.

I am also currently reading Devil in the White City by Erik Larson as part of one of the online Book clubs I belong to.

I also recently started reading, purely for my one personal pleasure and interest a book called The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr of which I am really enjoying because for one thing I am particularly found of Art History, and love books which revolve around art in some way and I have to say this book is written in what I think is quite an innovative style for Non-Fiction so it does not slip into feeling tedious at times. There is something almost playful in the authors approach that is not purely just dictating.

[ChicagoReader]

I always try to keep a dash of non-fiction reading on my list. Though I generally lean towards the more exciting topics such as war and adventure memoirs. The one on my list now that I am most craving to read is A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

[Dark Muse]

I always try to keep a dash of non-fiction reading on my list. Though I generally lean towards the more exciting topics such as war and adventure memoirs. The one on my list now that I am most craving to read is A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

I usually only enjoy war if it involves swords, bow and arrows, chain mail, maces, all that sort of good stuff.

I do have a book on my self all about gladiators which I have not read yet.

I also do love books about pirates and other nodical themes.

[blazeofglory]

[QUOTE=
Because Non-Fiction writers do not have that creative licence as fiction writers, non-fiction does not have the same ability to truly captivate and draw the reader into the story (at least for me) that fiction has. It is hard to escape that feeling of being lectured to.

[/QUOTE]

This is untrue. You have not read nonfiction, Dark. Read a few books of nonfiction you will find staggering creativity and beauty and a wealth of imagination that can surpass even fiction writings also. I am reading both and enjoying them equally and in some cases I find nonfiction more intriguing and in others fiction more telling. Fiction at times is bound to plot, characterization and sounds formulaic at on occasion whereas in nonfiction I see an un uninterrupted and unbroken flow. However it is a personal choice and some persons are more absorbed in fiction and others in nonfiction and we cannot be judgmental whose domains are more fascinating

[kiki1982]

Yup I have the same problem. I don't mind reading articles on things, but I just can't face a whole book of it. It always gets abandoned after a while. I think I'm going to take another go at doing this too.

My husband absolutely loved/s Andrew Marr's books on Britain. Mostly modern societal things, I think, but very interesting. He also made a few TV programs.

We have TM Wilson's Victorians in our library too. Interesting writing and apparently claimed the most complete thing about Victorian people, society, politics ever, but I haven't been able to get through it. Have to start on it again.

My hubby loved Shakespeare by Bill Bryson too. Although I don't know if that is real non-fiction.

And maybe these suggestions are not really what you might call good...

[kasie]

Dark - if you enjoy the history of warfare, you might enjoy John Keegan's The Face of War. It was published some time ago but I think it is still in print, or your library may have it. It tells the story of the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme, but from the point of view of the ordinary soldier instead of the usual 'official' version from the generals. The same author also wrote a huge book called The History of Warfare which is a massive read but is very interesting and made me think about warfare in a way I had not considered before.

As for Art History, you may enjoy Jerry Brotton's The Sale of the Late King's Goods which is about the dipersal of Charles I's art collection after his execution. The book was runner-up in the Samuel Johnston Prizefor Non Fiction the year James Shapiro won it with 1599 - a Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, also a good read.

I have rather a lot of history on the shelf to be read at the moment but I've made a start on Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars - Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, another huge book which will take me a long time to read but is very interesting as it deals with the effect the Reformation had on the worship of ordinary people in Britain, a subject again more frequently dealt with from the point of view of Kings and Bishops.

Kiki - I enjoyed Andrew Marr's books as well, mostly because I can hear his voice in his prose - he was Political Correspondent for BBC News for years as well as making the tv series that went with the books, and as such, the books have a comforting familiarity about them. However I have found he sometimes skims through a subject for the sake of keeping a narrative moving, a legacy of his broadcasting days, I suspect. I've also found Wilson's books to be somewhat partial in places, at least when he covers the 20th century in the volume that follows the Victorian one.

[stlukesguild]

I would say that the majority of non-fiction IS little better than a text book... but then the majority of fiction is mediocre at best as well. If you are looking for a book on a particular subject you are quite likely to have little options beyond the academic historian/biographer. In a sense this is really no different than fiction. Usually you don't seek out a fictional work dealing with a given person or event but rather you seek out the work of a given author. If you do the same with non-fiction you will find some real interesting work out there. Among my favorites I would include:

Montaigne- Essyas
Plato- The Republic and other dialogs
Goethe- Italian Journey
Edward Gibbon- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Thomas De Quincy- Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, Lake Reminiscences, Suspiria de Profundis,
The English Mail-Coach (The section on Anne from the English Opium Eater is particularly heart-breaking)
Charles Lamb- The Essays of Ellia
Dorothy Wordsworth- Journals
James Boswell- Life of Johnson, Journals, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Octavio Paz- In Light of India
Cees Nooteboom- Roads to Santiago
Gerard Nerval- Aurelia
Walter Pater- The Renaissance
John Ruskin- Seven Lamps of Architecture, Stones of Venice, Modern Painters
R.W. Emerson- Essays
Henry Thoreau- Walden
Izaak Walton- The Compleat Angler
Norman Mailer- Armies of the Night, Advertisements for Myself
Truman Capote- In Cold Blood
Rilke- Diaries of a Young Poet
Peter Ackroyd- Blake, The Life of Thomas More, London: The Biography, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Chaucer, Turner, Shakespeare: A Biography
Vasari- Lives of the Artists
De Tocqueville- Democracy in America
Paul Valéry- Selected Writings (especially the essays in Degas, danse, dessin)
Fernando Pessoa- The Book of Disquiet

These are just a few I could think of looking around at the shelves near me. Obviously, there are many more.

[cyberbob]

I might be one of the few people here who prefers non-fiction.

Popular science books are my favorites and books related to that. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Michio Kaku, Steven Pinker, Brian Greene, Sam Harris, Stephen Jay Gould, etc. I'm fascinated by stuff like that.

I also like to read a lot of politics and economics books. I agree that you should not concentrate so much on the topic but on the writer. There's tons of bland science and politics books so you want to start with a well established author and spread out from there.

What I like to do is go on Amazon and find one book and read the reviews to get a feel for the author, then click on the books that are similar to that one to see what else there is on the subject. It works, I've found a lot of good economics and evolution books this way. This also works with fiction more or less.

[prickly_pete]

Though I have always had an interest in history I have always found it difficult to get myself motivated to read works of Non-Fiction.

Well, at least you're in good company! So far as I can tell these boards are darned and determined not to aquire a single shred of knowledge that can't be attributed to a classical author, poet, or philosopher of some kind. Great for book clubs, but it really prevents one from having any real say in anything thats going on outside the walls of a museum or English department.

Literature might be useful for identity type of movements - which is probably why feminists, gay "rights", and "ethnic" studies type of people seem particularly drawn to art and English departments - but it isn't particularly useful for solving problems.

If you want to defend yourself in this world you're going to need facts and that means studying the dryer parts of history and science.

[ChicagoReader]

Well, at least you're in good company! So far as I can tell these boards are darned and determined not to aquire a single shred of knowledge that can't be attributed to a classical author, poet, or philosopher of some kind. Great for book clubs, but it really prevents one from having any real say in anything thats going on outside the walls of a museum or English department.

Literature might be useful for identity type of movements - which is probably why feminists, gay "rights", and "ethnic" studies type of people seem particularly drawn to art and English departments - but it isn't particularly useful for solving problems.

If you want to defend yourself in this world you're going to need facts and that means studying the dryer parts of history and science.


I'm sorry but I can't help but notice that you seem to downplay literature quite often, on a literature forum of all places. Why do you bother if it's not useful? I surely hope that you can't think literature is only good for identity issues, that's simply ignorant.

[OrphanPip]

Well, at least you're in good company! So far as I can tell these boards are darned and determined not to aquire a single shred of knowledge that can't be attributed to a classical author, poet, or philosopher of some kind. Great for book clubs, but it really prevents one from having any real say in anything thats going on outside the walls of a museum or English department.

This isn't true though, there are more than a few members, myself included, who have degrees in science or engineering. Most people are discussing literature here because the forum is a literature forum.



Literature might be useful for identity type of movements - which is probably why feminists, gay "rights", and "ethnic" studies type of people seem particularly drawn to art and English departments - but it isn't particularly useful for solving problems.

Meh, I'd argue that feminist and gay rights activist actually have solved real problems. Also, I'm not sure you could actually demonstrate that people who support those positions are more likely to be attracted to the arts than the sciences.



If you want to defend yourself in this world you're going to need facts and that means studying the dryer parts of history and science.

Yes, well that's why we have mandatory public education which includes courses in history and science.

[kiki1982]

Kiki - I enjoyed Andrew Marr's books as well, mostly because I can hear his voice in his prose - he was Political Correspondent for BBC News for years as well as making the tv series that went with the books, and as such, the books have a comforting familiarity about them. However I have found he sometimes skims through a subject for the sake of keeping a narrative moving, a legacy of his broadcasting days, I suspect. I've also found Wilson's books to be somewhat partial in places, at least when he covers the 20th century in the volume that follows the Victorian one.

Glad someone enjoyed Marr. :) That is a relief! I used to see him as a child, I think, on the BBC, when my parents occasionally watched the news. I didn't speak English then... My hubby and I now only watch BBC ever and we watched his documentaries, interesting they are. I do think he could have done better on his census program. Maybe if they had given him about three times the time... It was very interesting, all those facts from across the ages.

[prickly_pete]

Yes, well that's why we have mandatory public education which includes courses in history and science.

lol, that's not why we have mandatory public education pal.

lol

[prickly_pete]

I'm sorry but I can't help but notice that you seem to downplay literature quite often, on a literature forum of all places. Why do you bother if it's not useful? I surely hope that you can't think literature is only good for identity issues, that's simply ignorant.

I'm not downplaying literature but the OP wants to step into the fight and rage against the machine. S/he seems to be asking for scholarly studies in history, science, etc. - not non-fiction works published by poets and philosophers.

[conartist]

Because Non-Fiction writers do not have that creative licence as fiction writers, non-fiction does not have the same ability to truly captivate and draw the reader into the story (at least for me) that fiction has. It is hard to escape that feeling of being lectured to.

De Quincey, Pater, Ruskin, Emerson, Thoreau and a host of others are all fantastically enthralling non-fiction writers in English that draw the reader in as much as a strong novelist does. Bill Bryson is someone among living writers that has won a lot of acclaim for his true story telling. A brief history of nearly everything is the best overview of the history of science for a layman that I've read at least. Richard Ellmann wrote biographies far better than the average novelist writes novels. Then there are people like Bloom, Frye, Hazlitt, Dr Johnson, and a good percentage of all creative writers that have ever lived writing about literature in insightful, inventive ways.

[Venerable Bede]

You may find a lot of primary sources to be more interesting, since many of them were written to entertain as well as inform. A few that I would recommend are:

Bede's Ecclesiastical History by Venerable Bede

Journey through Wales and Conquest of Ireland by Gerald of Wales.

Histories by Herodotus

Of course you'd probably want to find primary texts from whatever period you are most interested in, but these are just a few of my favourites.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Though I have always had an interest in history I have always found it difficult to get myself motivated to read works of Non-Fiction...

...Because Non-Fiction writers do not have that creative licence as fiction writers, non-fiction does not have the same ability to truly captivate and draw the reader into the story (at least for me) that fiction has. It is hard to escape that feeling of being lectured to.

...But because I do enjoy learning knew things, love history and like to expand my reading I have decided to become more pro-active in reading more works of Non-Fiction...

Cincidentally, one of the books I am currently reading might fit the bill. It is The RA Expeditions by thor Heyerdhal. Heyerdahl set out to prove a possible link between ancient Egypt and the New World via boats made of reeds, capable of crossing the Atlantic. So far I have found Heyerdahls writing to be quite entertaining while delivering the dry facts.

.

[Dark Muse]

De Quincey, Pater, Ruskin, Emerson, Thoreau and a host of others are all fantastically enthralling non-fiction writers in English that draw the reader in as much as a strong novelist does. Bill Bryson is someone among living writers that has won a lot of acclaim for his true story telling. A brief history of nearly everything is the best overview of the history of science for a layman that I've read at least. Richard Ellmann wrote biographies far better than the average novelist writes novels. Then there are people like Bloom, Frye, Hazlitt, Dr Johnson, and a good percentage of all creative writers that have ever lived writing about literature in insightful, inventive ways.

I have actually read Walden, but a part of my brain keeps forgetting that it was in fact non-fiction because I did enjoy so much and because it did read more novel like than a lot of non-fiction does.

I have had Confessions of an Opium Reader by De Quincy on my want to read list for a while so I am glad to see it getting so many good recommendations.

[Dark Muse]

Cincidentally, one of the books I am currently reading might fit the bill. It is The RA Expeditions by thor Heyerdhal. Heyerdahl set out to prove a possible link between ancient Egypt and the New World via boats made of reeds, capable of crossing the Atlantic. So far I have found Heyerdahls writing to be quite entertaining while delivering the dry facts.

.

That does sound like something I would be intereted in, I will have to keep it in mind.

[wessexgirl]

I read non-fiction too Dark, and like you I have interests in History, and Art History, as well as Literature, Criticism, Biogs etc. I would agree with Luke and recommend Peter Ackroyd's books. He writes novels and non-fiction, and has written about lots of writers as well as wonderful fiction. I would also recommend:

Simon Schama for History and Art History, with titles like Rembrandt's Eyes, Citizens, and the Power of Art;
Andrew Graham Dixon for Art History, with (a current read of mine which was recently on the shortlist of the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, but didn't win) Caravaggio;
Tom Holland for Rubicon, a wonderful history of Ancient Rome and the machinations between the big players;
Clare Tomalin, for wonderful works on Hardy, Dickens, Pepys, to name but a few, and one I intend to read soon, on Dickens and EllenTernan;
Charles Nicholl for The Reckoning, a fabulous book about the death, (and possible/probable assasssination) of Christopher Marlowe;
Antonia Fraser, (who I see is on your list) for works on Charles 11, Mary Queen of Scots, Louis X1V and many others.

I have shelves full of history books, but I think some of them may be too dry for your tastes, as many of them are renowned historians who wrote the leading books in their fields, and are often cited as the texts to use in study. However, there are many who can fulfill the criteria of readability and erudition, like the ones mentioned, so I urge you to give them a go. I don't think you'll be disappointed.