Book Recs — 5 Books for Non-Fiction November

Hello to all!

I’m hopping in that Non-Fiction November train because, to be honest, I needed an idea for a post since I’ve been slacking lately but also I haven’t posted about non-fiction on my blog yet and I think it’s the best time to change that!

So, I have some, pretty varied in my opinion, non-fiction recommendations for you!

📚 Why Evolution Is True
by Jerry A. Coyne

SCIENCE || BIOLOGY || HISTORY

“Weaving together and explaining the latest discoveries and ideas from many disparate areas of modern science, this succinct and important book explains the truth about, and the beauty of, evolution.”

Coyne explains various aspects of evolution in an easy and approachable way while eliminating the most popular counterarguments against it. To be honest, I was sure everyone was aware that evolution is in fact very real and true so it was a big surprise to me there are still people who don’t believe in it but it’s a great book if you’re interested in biology and the history of our world.

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📚 Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

LANGUAGE || WRITING

“Stein on Writing provides immediately useful advice for all writers of fiction and nonfiction, whether they are newcomers or old hands, students or instructors, amateurs or professionals. As the always clear and direct Stein explains here, “This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions–how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place.” With examples from bestsellers as well as from students’ drafts, Stein offers detailed sections on characterization, dialogue, pacing, flashbacks, trimming away flabby wording, the so-called “triage” method of revision, using the techniques of fiction to enliven nonfiction, and more.”

Apart the Non-fiction November we also have NaNoWriMo this month and after you write your novel you’ll need to EDIT IT. Sol Stein will help you with that. He gives practical advice on various aspects of the novel — how to quicken the pace of your novel, how to write better dialogue, etc… — along with examples and his experiences. 

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📚 The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth

LANGUAGE || LINGUISTICS || HISTORY

“The Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth’s Inky Fool blog on the strange connections between words. It’s an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.”

The Etymologicon is a great choice if you don’t have much time for reading or you can’t focus for longer periods of time on non-fiction. Each ‘chapter’ here is 1-2 pages long and tells a history of various English words. I was reading it between lectures at uni when I had no energy for anything else. It’s short. It’s funny. It’s informative.

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📚 Queer, There and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager

History || LGBTQ || BIOGRAPHY

“World history has been made by countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals—and you’ve never heard of many of them.

Queer author and activist Sarah Prager delves deep into the lives of 23 people who fought, created, and loved on their own terms. From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn’t make it into your history books, these astonishing true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era.”

When I was younger I hated history. Turns out I was just tired with hearing about a bunch white straight cis men rulling and messing up the world. (And I was bad at memorising all the dates and names but that’s another story.) So if you want to learn more about queer people this book is a great start! 

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📚 The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future by Alexandra Brodsky, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, S.E. Smith

FEMINISM || ESSAYS || ANTHOLOGIES

“What do we want?

In this groundbreaking collection, more than fifty cutting-edge voices, including Melissa Harris-Perry, Janet Mock, Sheila Heti, and Mia McKenzie, invite us to imagine a truly feminist world. An abortion provider reinvents birth control, Sheila Bapat envisions an economy that values domestic work, a teenage rock band dreams up a new way to make music, Katherine Cross rewrites the Constitution, and Maya Dusenbery resets the standard for good sex. Combining essays, interviews, poetry, illustrations, and short stories, The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given—and inspires us to demand a radically better future.”

Do you ever wonder what the perfect world would be like? This books provides 57 of those worlds and each is different but they still have some common aspects: compassion, understanding, celebration of differences. Daydreaming may not seem like the most important thing right now but if we want to better the world we need to know where we’re going and what’s our goal and this book is a great way to explore that.