My Year in Non-Fiction (non-fiction november)

Non-Fiction November is finally here again and this time I get to participate, even if I’m joining on the last stretch of the first week! It’s a whole-month celebration of everything non-fiction — a genre I absolutely love.

The prompts will be hosted by a lovely group of bloggers: Rennie (What’s Nonfiction), Katie (Doing Dewey), Sarah (Sarah’s Bookshelves), and Julie (JulzReads). Every week there’ll be a prompt and always the same love for non-fiction.

Without further ado, let’s jump into this week’s prompt!

What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?

I was very surprised to see on Goodreads that I have only read five non-fiction books this year, so far. For comparison, I’ve managed to finish 44 already. It feels like I’ve read so much more!

This year’s favorite non-fiction book has to be Missoula by Jon Krakauer. The book follows the story of the prosecuted and non-prosecuted rape cases at the University of Montana. Jon Krakauer did his job brilliantly by really going into depth with all the cases he reports — which can’t have been easy!
Krakauer puts us in the room where the rapes happened with his realistic prose and hard facts. We get to see how the victims dealt with the horrific abuses, how the police treated both assailants and victims, and how (if ever) the jury and the justice system handled their cases.
If you’re interested in learning more about the rape epidemic, as Kraukauer puts it, that goes on in some American universities, you need to pick up this book. It paints a shockingly vivid, and unfortunately too real, portrait of the power relations inside the Montana college campus.

Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year?

Without a doubt! I love learning about history and I’ve been gravitating a lot towards narrative history books.

It all started when I wanted to learn more about Russia back in January. Now, almost ten months later, I’m quite happy with the books I’ve gotten and can’t wait for winter break to finally read them!

Here are the books I’ve gotten as part of my history-loving quest this year so far:

In fact, I’m reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari right now and I’m loving it! I’m only a fourth into it, but boy oh boy my mind has been blown already.

I think that what I love so much about these books, especially those that follow history on a person-by-person-through-the-centuries basis, is that it makes history so much closer to us. It’s very easy to desmiss the struggles of a pre-Revolution French farmer when we’re talking about numbers, but they feel so much closer to us when we follow a narrative history.

What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?

This has to be, by far, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s one of the books that made me an even more believer in vegetarianism/veganism as a means to save the environment.
You may think this book is all about angry and incoherent vegan arguments. After all, it seems that the biggest vegan personalities on YouTube are always spewing out slaughterhouse footage and unscientific facts. But I can promise you Foer does none of that!
The author did his research very thouroughly. He uses scientific sound arguments to deffend the vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. Jonathan Safran Foer touches upon the ethics, the sustainability, and the health impacts of not eating meat. It’s a great book that reads fast and may change your outlook on the food industry completely!

What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

This November, I really want to share my love for non-fiction books and even expand my horizons some more! There are always books out there that I’ve never heard of but that I’m sure I’ll want to read — so November will be the month when I add books to my TBR!

Plus, since Non-Fiction November is a weekly thing, I’m hoping it’ll force me back into my blogging routine.

---

---

---

Are you participating in Non-Fiction November? If so, link me to your posts because I want to read them! I hope you have a great November blogging about the somewhat-forgotten-about book genre 🌻