I continue looking at nonfiction as part of the Nonfiction November event. For the second week, which I am running a bit behind, the prompt is on choosing nonfiction. The prompt is:
What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If so, share a title or cover which you find striking.
Prompt via Volatile Rune, who was host for the week.
When it comes to nonfiction, I am looking to learn new things. I am also at this point in my life looking for nonfiction that is easy to read. I am likely to avoid big "door stopper" kind of books. In terms of book genres, I enjoy history especially what is often known as microhistories, those books that take one topic and look at it throughout history and do it well. Often these books have a narrative, and as much as possible I prefer my history and nonfiction to have a narrative. I am not much into reading textbooks. I already read those during my schooling, and I don't need that now.
Other topics in nonfiction I enjoy include, but are not limited to, road trips, travels, some food themed books, and some memoirs and biographies. I read a little bit of current affairs, but not as much as I used to. I also used to read politics and social issues, but after the 2016 election, I got burned out on reading those, so now I have a reading moratorium in place where I do not read anything in politics, social issues, or activist subjects. While I may have to make an exception here or there, either to learn on an issue or to review a book for our library, I avoid those topics overall. I am more interested in lighter topics where I can learn something new and have a good reading experience.
I get my nonfiction where I get most of my books, and that is the library. I work in an academic library, so I have access to our collections. In addition, I am an active user of my local public library and the library in the big city nearby. I got access to that one because my local public library has reciprocal privileges, so I have two public library cards I use. In addition, as a book reviewer and librarian, I also access ARCs (advanced reader copies) from services like NetGalley and Edelweiss. Those places give me plenty of options for reading nonfiction and other genres.
On a side note, if you are interested in me reviewing a book, I do have a book review policy in place you can check out. If it works for you and your book falls within what I review, feel free to let me know. Even if you are not seeking to have a book or cartomancy deck reviewed, the policy does give a statement of what I read and don't read overall.
Titles and covers can have some influence in what I choose to read. Titles probably have a bit more influence when I select books from my library. As many academic libraries do, my library removes book cover jackets from the books (for easier processing) so usually all I have initially is a title to go from to decide if I want to read a book or not. At the public library, I can see the covers since they choose to take the time and effort to process the books and keep the covers. In the public library, a good book cover can get me to try out a book.
Overall, my nonfiction reading can be fairly eclectic. Here is a small sampling of nonfiction books I have recently added to my TBR (to be read) list. For reference, links to go WorldCat or to my blog if I read and reviewed a book:
- Ada Ferrer, Cuba: an American History. As much as I can, I try to read Latin American history.
- Erik Loomis, A History of America in Ten Strikes. This may be one that makes me break my reading moratorium, but I tend to like history books that use lists, such as ten strikes, to tell a story. Other books in this similar style include And A Bottle of Rum: a History of the World in Ten Cocktails by Wayne Curtis.
- I am currently reading Thrifty Witchery. As a cartomancer and somewhat practitioner of magic, I read various books on cartomancy and esoterica. This is an area of my nonfiction I do not talk about as often aside from reviewing the books I read.
- In nonfiction, I also enjoy trivia books on various topics.
And that is a small bit on how I select nonfiction books to read. If you want to learn more, over at Alchemical Thoughts, my cartomancy and commonplace blog, I have a running series of posts for my TBR, "Items about books I want to read," where I list books I would like to read plus a link to the article or source where I learned about a book. I've been doing that for some time now. Here is the latest one as of this post. Often those lists includes some quirky and curious topics, again reflective of my eclectic interests as reader and librarian.
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