2013 Non-fiction challenge

[TheFifthElement]

I've decided that in addition to my other reading challenges this year, I want to read more non-fiction. I struggle to read non-fiction, or rather I find it difficult to read non-fiction continuously (unless I'm reading for a purpose, like work or planned study) but actually when I read it I find it quite interesting. So, my challenge for this year is to read 12 non-fiction books, one per month. My plan is that I will read them piecemeal - so perhaps just a chapter a day and perhaps mixing them up a bit. So long as by the end of the year I've managed 12, I'll be very pleased with myself.

In line with the 2013 female writers challenge I'd like to ensure that a significant proportion of the non-fiction books I read have been written by women.

My list so far looks kind of like this:

- The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
- Human Trafficking by Louise Shelley
- A Vindication on the Rights of Women by Mary Wolestonecraft
- Freedom from Fear and other writings by Ang San Suu Kyi
- Silent Spring by Rachael Carson
- Longitude by Dava Sobel
- Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker
- Genetics, Insurance and Discrimination by Onora O'Neill
- Understanding Semantics by Sebastian Löebner

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)

[kev67]

I have read Longitude. That is quite a good book. The best non-fiction book I read last year was Homicide by David Simon. I suppose that comes under the True Crime genre. Another book in that genre is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I read quite a lot of non-fiction. I often find it eye-opening. The only problem is that it often becomes out of date.

[qimissung]

In Cold Blood is one of the best books I have ever read.

[kev67]

Non-fiction books on my shelf waiting to be read includes:


Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present by Joanna Bourke
Rubicon by Tom Holland
Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
The Black Death by John Hatcher
Debunking Economics by Steve Keen
The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett


I am currently reading The Quest by Daniel Yergin, which is very good.

[Volya]

The Better Angels of our Nature - Steven Pinker
A very enlightening book.

[Scheherazade]

I almost never read entire non-fiction books; mostly chapters or articles for professional research or sometimes for my studies.

There are couple of couple of books I would like to read on education so this might give me the push I need to do that.

Good challenge, Fifth :)

[TheFifthElement]

Also adding Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey.

[sadparadise]

Better Angels by Stephen Pinker, is a great read! For all those who believe we are more violent than our predecessors, this book is an eye opener.

Hitch 22 and God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens are well worth the time. Sam Harris's book on Free Will, Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan and The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins are all fantastic reads.

[TheFifthElement]

*Update*
1. Gorillas in the Mist - Dian Fossey

An excellent book on the setting up of the Karisoke Gorilla Research Centre in Rwanda, and Fossey's interactions with the gorillas and people there. A fascinating read, well worth the effort.

I've also read a few chapters of The Voyage of the Beagle which is equally interesting. I need to take that one slowly though, as there's a lot to it.

I started reading a book called Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker which I ended up giving up on about 2/3 of the way through. The theory behind the book was interesting (following the development of a theory that the Earth was once entirely covered in ice, and this event was the trigger for development of complex life) but the book, whilst very nicely written, was 90% packing. I guess there isn't a lot to say about the theory, so instead there was a lot about the interactions of the scientists, how they dressed, what their wives were like etc etc. A lot of it was quite inane and in the end it just made me angry. Too much story, not enough science. Also the writer came across as a total groupie of the key scientist, and this also became quite annoying. Not recommended.

Next up is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This one looks pretty good.

[McGrain]

Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present by Joanna Bourke.

Sounds cheery.

[Phocion]

Non-fiction books on my shelf waiting to be read includes:


Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present by Joanna Bourke
Rubicon by Tom Holland
Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
The Black Death by John Hatcher
Debunking Economics by Steve Keen
The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett


I am currently reading The Quest by Daniel Yergin, which is very good.

The Spirit Level is garbage: bad stats, selective data, tedious prose; simply is not worth the time.

[WICKES]

I'm a big fan of essays- especially by early 20th century British writers. Try the collected essays of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell. The great thing about essay collections is that you can pick and choose essays that interest you. Some think Orwell was the best 20th English-language essayist, but for me it's Huxley. What sets Huxley apart is his staggering breadth of knowledge: this was a man who got a first from Oxford in English Literature but could hold his own with any science professor. He is a dazzling polymath who writes about everything, and always in a polished, witty, urbane style.

I'd also recommed any of Bertrand Russell's popular philosophy works, especially 'The Problems of Philosophy' and 'What I Believe'. Russell was a staggering intellect, yet is never dry or pompous, his writings are full of warmth, sympathy and humour and are written in wonderfully lucid and accessible prose. Reading his popular stuff is like having your mind stretched and filled with light. He has a real gift for making difficult ideas simple (or simpler).

- Harold Blooms's great book on Shakespeare.
- Stephen Hawking's 'Brief History of Time'
- Martin Amis' 'War Against Cliche'
- Christopher Hitchens' Hitch 22

I'm a big fan of Stephen Fry and would recommend his autobiography and 'The Ode Less Travelled', which is a better introduction to poetry than many professors could write. The man is as big a national treasure as Stonehenge.

C S Lewis' literary criticism is amazing
I'd also recommend Robert Graves' non-fiction, especially his lectures and essays on poetry.
William James' introductory works on psychology are on my 'to-read' list, along with Stephen Jay Gould's essays on evolution.
Oh, and Dawkin's is great on evolution (but a bit crude and reductive on religion).
David Attenborough also wrote a book called 'Life on Earth', which was published by BBC books and is good stuff. He lays out the appearance and nature of life on earth in a clear, precise, chronological manner.

[Seasider]

Orwell "Down and Out in Paris and London"
Orwell "The Road to Wigan Pier"
"The Holocaust" by Martin Gilbert
"The Subjection of Women" by John Stuart Mill
"Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves
"Ten Rillington Place" by Ludovic Kennedy

A bit dark I know but all interesting.

[WICKES]

Orwell "Down and Out in Paris and London"
.

That's a great choice. I've been working my way through Orwell's complete works and found this the most enjoyable. 'Goodbye To All That' is also wonderful- possibly my favourite book.

[Kafka's Crow]

Recently finished reading "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail and Succeed" by Jared Diamond. Read Boswell's "Life of Johnson" after that and now re-reading Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy". I have the Steven Pinker book waiting to be read.

[ladderandbucket]

So far this year I have read:

Why does the world exist by Jim Holt - enjoyable and lucid survey of contemporary cosmology and metaphysics. Slightly let down by the authors personal anecdotes which I suspect were included to make it more 'popular' but end up looking bizarrely out of place.

French revolution by Christopher Hibbert - straightforward narrative of events. Ideal for a newcomer to the subject like me.

Currently reading:

Europe by Norman Davies - epic history book, very accessible, will be sad to come to the end of it.

Blood and rage: a cultural history of terrorism by Michael Burleigh - history of terrorist acts from 19th century anarchists to present times. Well written and interesting but rather one-sided. I believe that terrorists are indefensible but Burleigh makes them all into caricatures, gives little space to their motivations and a lot of space to derogatory remarks about 'liberals' and 'leftists'.

Waiting to be read:

Great war for civilisation by Robert Fisk - 1400 pages!..will consume in small chunks.

Infinity and the mind by Rudy Rucker - amazon reviews looked promising but having looked through it I feel intimidated by all the maths. Will probably end up having to skip quite a bit of it :frown2:

[kev67]

So far this year I have read:


Currently reading:

Europe by Norman Davies - epic history book, very accessible, will be sad to come to the end of it.



I started reading that but gave up. I found the text boxes rather annoying. I would have to break off where I was reading to read the inserts in the text boxes, then try and pick up the thread on the main text. I wondered whether I should have read the main text first and then go back to the start of the book and read all the text boxes.

[ladderandbucket]

I agree the text boxes are distracting and an unnecessary gimmick. I think they would have been better off as end notes or an appendix.

[krishna_lit]

I've started "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer .. when I watched the film i fell in love with the dialogue of the film and when i came to know it was based on a book i just couldn't resist...! Next lined up non-ficiton book is "Steve Jobs" biography by Wealter Isacson.

[wordeater]

Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics
Naomi Klein, No Logo

[TheFifthElement]

I'm doing terribly badly with my non-fiction reading challenge. So far I have read:
1. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

both excellent reads. I have, however, had to abandon Snowball Earth by Gabriella Walker which was just the most fluff filled dreadful groupieism and I am working my way slowly through Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which is brilliant but just so damned depressing (how stupid are we?). It's May. I should be up to 4 by now (mea culpa mea culpa...)

[hannah_arendt]

I started reading that but gave up. I found the text boxes rather annoying. I would have to break off where I was reading to read the inserts in the text boxes, then try and pick up the thread on the main text. I wondered whether I should have read the main text first and then go back to the start of the book and read all the text boxes.

I have always been impressed how many books he has written so far about polish history. I think that his texts are much better than those written by polish historians.

[TheFifthElement]

*Update*
1. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
3. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
4. A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong

Silent Spring took me a long time to read but overall it's an excellent, if slightly depressing, read.

I'm catching up :D

[kev67]

*Update*
1. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
3. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
4. A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong

Silent Spring took me a long time to read but overall it's an excellent, if slightly depressing, read.

I'm catching up :D

Silent Spring is a famous book and had a big impact but it is several decades old now. Is it still relevant? DDT is not used much as a pesticide any more. I have read several authors remark that it was not so much DDT that was the problem but its indiscriminate use as a crop dusting pesticide. If it had been used as it was intended it may have saved a lot of human life from malaria.

I have read one book by Karen Armstrong. I think it was called The History of God. However, I found it not very interesting and hard to follow.

[TheFifthElement]

Silent Spring is a famous book and had a big impact but it is several decades old now. Is it still relevant? DDT is not used much as a pesticide any more. I have read several authors remark that it was not so much DDT that was the problem but its indiscriminate use as a crop dusting pesticide. If it had been used as it was intended it may have saved a lot of human life from malaria.

I think it is still relevant in the sense that it seeded the environmental movement. I was reminded of Silent Spring in the recent campaigns to ban certain pesticides which appear to be decimating the bee population. So really its meaning has not gone away.

The 'several authors' are quite right on their point, but that is also actually Carson's point; if you read the book her focus is very much on the indiscriminate use of pesticides and their damaging impact on the environment. It does not just focus on DDT, in fact DDT probably gets much less of a mention than heptachlor or chlordane, and neither does it expressly criticise the use of these chemicals in the fight against transmissable diseases.The focus of the book is very much on the inappropriate and excessive use of these chemicals in the agricultural and forestry domain. The only real mention of use of DDT in disease control centres around evidence of resistance in the mosquito population again largely owing to it being dusted in excessive concentrations over vast areas of land. It does make you wonder, had the indiscriminate use of these pesticides continued, would we now have an entirely resistant mosquito? As it happens, DDT is still authorised for use in disease control, in the right dose and subject to determining that the local mosquito population is not resistant.

She also raises the point that these kinds of dangerous chemicals were not just in the hands of farmers who didn't know what to do with them, but in the hands of the general population. Where access to medicines was restricted, access to chemicals that could, and did, kill was not restricted at all. They were also dusting these chemicals on to people and environments, without really knowing or understanding what the effects were, or allowing people to prevent it. Significant damage occurred to populations of bird and fish, whereas the insect pests which it was intended to wipe out tended to recover very quickly and then thrive because their natural predators had been killed. Carson's point was that rather than us being 'masters' of our environment, the environment is a delicate balance which should be tinkered with carefully and sparingly. I think, over the years, that message is sinking in and in that respect I see the book as being as relevant today as it was at the time it was published.

The Karen Armstrong book was also fascinating. A very compact assessment of the history of myth and very easy to follow. If anything, I would have liked to have seen it expanded, as it did leave me wanting more.

[cafolini]

I think it is still relevant in the sense that it seeded the environmental movement. I was reminded of Silent Spring in the recent campaigns to ban certain pesticides which appear to be decimating the bee population. So really its meaning has not gone away.

The 'several authors' are quite right on their point, but that is also actually Carson's point; if you read the book her focus is very much on the indiscriminate use of pesticides and their damaging impact on the environment. It does not just focus on DDT, in fact DDT probably gets much less of a mention than heptachlor or chlordane, and neither does it expressly criticise the use of these chemicals in the fight against transmissable diseases.The focus of the book is very much on the inappropriate and excessive use of these chemicals in the agricultural and forestry domain. The only real mention of use of DDT in disease control centres around evidence of resistance in the mosquito population again largely owing to it being dusted in excessive concentrations over vast areas of land. It does make you wonder, had the indiscriminate use of these pesticides continued, would we now have an entirely resistant mosquito? As it happens, DDT is still authorised for use in disease control, in the right dose and subject to determining that the local mosquito population is not resistant.

She also raises the point that these kinds of dangerous chemicals were not just in the hands of farmers who didn't know what to do with them, but in the hands of the general population. Where access to medicines was restricted, access to chemicals that could, and did, kill was not restricted at all. They were also dusting these chemicals on to people and environments, without really knowing or understanding what the effects were, or allowing people to prevent it. Significant damage occurred to populations of bird and fish, whereas the insect pests which it was intended to wipe out tended to recover very quickly and then thrive because their natural predators had been killed. Carson's point was that rather than us being 'masters' of our environment, the environment is a delicate balance which should be tinkered with carefully and sparingly. I think, over the years, that message is sinking in and in that respect I see the book as being as relevant today as it was at the time it was published.

The Karen Armstrong book was also fascinating. A very compact assessment of the history of myth and very easy to follow. If anything, I would have liked to have seen it expanded, as it did leave me wanting more.

I would have to agree. Still very valid and longlastingly so. It's not over until it's over.