Skip to main content

Armchair BEA: Non-Fiction

  Design credit: Emily of Emily's Reading Room

Today's theme at Armchair BEA is Nonfiction. I really enjoy all sorts of nonfiction. Many of the nonfiction books I've read have been with my book club. We read a wide variety of books and often end up reading memoirs and other nonfiction books. Also, in 2012, I hosted the Non-Memoir Non-Fiction Reading Challenge. This was a challenge to help me branch out from memoirs and learn something new!

Following are some of my favorites from the past few years. I've discussed several of these with my book club, but I think all of them would be great selections for book club discussion.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Khristof and Sheryl WuDunn

The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

A Hundred Feet Over Hell by Jim Hooper

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

In My Father's Country by Saima Wahab

Thirty Days with My Father by Christal Presley

Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 31, 2013 at 8:42 PM

    The Devil in the White City & Glass Castle are on several people's lists. I need to check them out! Happy reading!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieJune 1, 2013 at 3:35 PM

      You definitely should! Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  2. BeccaMay 31, 2013 at 8:46 PM

    You have so many books on your favorites that I want to read! The one I have read is The Glass Castle and I loved it, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieJune 1, 2013 at 3:35 PM

      Glad to hear it! Definitely check them out!

      Delete
  3. The Relentless ReaderJune 1, 2013 at 9:04 AM

    You've listed a bunch of great books Julie :) I've read the King, Larson, Walls, Skloot, and Hillenbrand.

    Larson has another titled In the Garden of Beasts that was excellent!

    Yay for nonfiction! It's my favorite!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieJune 1, 2013 at 3:36 PM

      Someone at my last book club meeting was talking about In the Garden of the Beasts. Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  4. ahz1June 1, 2013 at 3:11 PM

    That's an excellent selection of books. I'll have to look into that Stephen King one.
    AH@Badass Book Reviews

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieJune 1, 2013 at 3:44 PM

      It was really interesting to hear his perspective on things.

      Delete
  5. AnonymousJune 2, 2013 at 4:46 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Popular posts from this blog

Getting back to blogging

It seems that blogging has dropped to the bottom of my list for the past year, and was pretty low for the year or two prior to that. I love to read, and am continuing to do so, but as my regular readers know I haven't been around much. My last blog post was almost a year ago!!

There are many things that have taken me away from blogging. Work has been much more challenging and interesting these past few years, but that means I really don't want to get back on the computer when I get home at night - or on the weekends.

Family life has been more busy with kids having multiple activities in the evenings, leaving little time to just hang out and write about the books that I read.

I will admit to a bit of a Facebook addiction, which means way too much time spent scrolling through my newsfeed instead of doing something more productive. This is one of the things I'm working on and hoping that this will free up some time for getting back to the blog.

Overall, life is good. Work is …
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett

Peter Byerly is distraught over the loss of his wife nine months ago. He has retreated to their cottage in the English countryside, hoping to return to his love of collecting and restoring rare books. But when he opens a book about Shakespeare forgeries and finds a Victorian watercolor of a woman who looks just like his wife, Peter is soon on a search for the origin of the painting and the truth about Shakespeare's real identity.

The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession by Charlie Lovett is a wonderful journey for anyone who loves books. It follows Peter's search in 1995, which turns into a bit of a thriller at times. But Lovett also takes the reader back in time a bit so we can learn the story of his relationship with his wife and how he came to be a bookseller. He does a beautiful job of expressing Peter's feelings about the rare books he encounters, and his feelings are contagious.

And then he takes us back even further to the history of one particular volume, whos…
3 comments
Read more

Banned Books Week: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park

This is the end of Banned Books Week and unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to write about banned books this year. But I did want to include at least one post about it, so today I wanted to share one of the book series that it seems most people are surprised to find on the list: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park.

According to Wikipedia:
The Junie B. Jones series came in at #71 on the American Library Association's list of the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books from 2000-2009. Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar. This is an interesting example of a banned book. Many times there are serious, controversial topics featured in books that are challenged. Things like homosexuality, drugs, vulgar language, etc. You can actually understand why people may not want their children to read those books, and why they may challenge their inclusion in school libra…
10 comments
Read more