My participation in Nonfiction November has been sporadic, until last year when I managed to complete the whole series. Maybe I will again this year, maybe I won’t. We’ll see.
Nonfiction November, as most of you know, is hosted by several bloggers. This year, Week 1 – Your Year in Nonfiction is hosted by Heather at Based On A True Story, with variations on the usual first week questions.
But, here’s the thing. As we come to the end of 2023, I’m having to come clean on what a strange reading year I’ve had. You will hear more in my end-of-year roundups, but by then you’ll have had inklings from posts like this! Last year, I wrote for this post that I’d read about 25% more nonfiction than I’d read in each of the preceding few years. Last year’s (that is for 2022) non-fiction reading had comprised 45% life-writing, 45% essays, with the rest being “other” non-fiction. This year, since the end of last November, I have read only TWO nonfiction works and both have been memoirs.
What were your favorites?
The two books are Debra Dank’s We come with this place (my review), and JD Vance’s Hillbilly elegy (my review). We are asked to name our favourites, which is always tricky for me, as I don’t tend to think in terms of “favourites”. Both these books provided truly fascinating insights, albeit in diametrically opposed directions. Dank is a First Nations Australian writer who conveys with impressive clarity just how the interconnectedness between her people, the ancestors and Country works, and how that translates into knowing Country, while Vance was a poor white hillbilly from Kentucky who is now a Republican politician and, last I heard, a Trumpian. You won’t be surprised I think to hear me say that while I found Vance enlightening in terms of contemporary US politics, Dank’s book is by far my favourite. She bowled me over with her generosity.
Have you had a favourite topic, and Is there a topic you want to read about more?
I’m bundling there two questions together because clearly I didn’t review enough nonfiction this year to have a favourite topic, but what I’d like to read more are books on my favourite interests areas – literary biographies, nature writing, and works about social justice/social history.
I have several literary biographies, in particular, on my TBR, so maybe next year I’ll have a fuller report to make. In terms of the third area – social justice/social history – I must say that reading more nonfiction from First Nations writers, like Debra Danks’ book, is what interests me right now.
What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?
As I wrote last year, I am not looking for more recommendations – not because I am not interested but because I have too much on my TBR already without adding to the pile (physical and virtual). However, I always like book talk, and the book talk I most like is that which focuses on areas that interest me (see above), and which talks about wider issues like why do we read nonfiction, what do we look for, and what makes a good nonfiction read?
What do you think?
Whispering Gums 
I was a participant in the inaugural Adoption Literary Festival yesterday, so obviously all the writers featured have written their memoir, and you don’t want any more for your TBR pile 🙂
But I hope the recordings to come available soonish, so perhaps keep an eye on my blog and have a listen in. You will hear heaps to add to your discussion pile.
best wishes, Gwen Wilson (I Belong to No One, Hachette, 2015).
Thanks Gwen … will do … do you still have comments closed on your blog? I am often frustrated because I want to say something but can’t!
How did the festival go?
I was part of the very small organising group, so we were happy to see the festival just get off the ground. There were a few technical glitches with MS Teams, but I think it resonated well with the participants.
This was the programme:
https://www.benevolent.org.au/services-and-programs/post-adoption-services/adoption-literary-festival
Thanks again … and good for you. Organising these things is really hard work but satisfying too when you pull it off.
Oh, I’ve just checked and see I can comment. Will do so as soon as I get back home and can settle down to catching up.
Oh, what a relief! I didn’t “think” I had comments closed 🙂
I think I confused you with another blogger who appeared on my radar around the same. Apologies. I’ve really not been fully attentive this year.
I hope you manage to get a couple more NF titles read before the end of the year, from your TBR for sure!
I would love to Claire! Thanks.
Oh literary bios! Last year I tidied up some bookshelves and realized just how many of those I had unread. So I put them all together with a vow I would get to them this year. Have? Nope. I look at their spines on the shelf a lot, so I suppose that’s progress 😀
Haha Stefanie. I do that a lot too. You know how in yoga they often say visualising a pose is about as good as doing it? Do you reckon that works with TBRs too?
If only it did! 😀
LOL Ohhh, I love this. The visualised reading experience.
Coincidentally, I shelved all my literary bio’s differently this year to try to encourage myself in their directions too (splitting some of them into the fiction with “their authors” and some with related subjects).
That’s a great idea for sorting.
Well .. obviously a book about a topic of great personal interest; and since this changes from time to time, the choice is pretty damned large ! 😀
It is MR. … thanks (I hope you read the version of this post in the site not in the email ad I tidied it up a bit. I wrote it in a squeezed bit of time … which happens a bit too much these days!)
I spy The Red Witch in your paragraph about LitBios!
I loved that book. It encapsulates for me how some litbios are good to read per se, while others *small sigh* have to be persisted with just because you love the author. I have one which I have started three times, it’s about an author I love, but *bigger sigh*… well, let’s just say that the biographer’s style is not great.
I think that’s probably true for a lot of NF. For general readers as distinct from those with a keen interest in whatever it is, the writing *must* be good in order to keep our interest. Over the years I’ve bought a lot of NF because it sounded interesting, but more than a few of these have been culled because I didn’t get on with the writer’s style.
Haha you spotted correctly Lisa!
And yes re nonfiction. I remarked somewhere recently that the nonfiction I’m interested in has to be interestingly written unless the subject is so important I HAVE to read it but that would be rare these days.
I have been dipping into more nature writing this year. I especially enjoy Robert McFarland.
Yes I like nature writing too Pam … funny you should mention him as Ian does too.
I enjoyed reading a book called something like 18 Tiny Deaths, which was about the rise of forensic science in the US. I enjoyed it mainly because I learned we still don’t use many forensic scientists; we use coroners, who apparently do a lot of guessing and assuming as opposed to science.
I didn’t know that. I thought coroners used input from forensic scientists.
No, they’re a whole separate thing in the U.S. because coroners are much cheaper than forensic scientists. According to the book, they will even choose the most obvious death because they don’t have much else to go on. If they were in the water, they drowned, if they were fat, they died of fatness, if they were in a fire, probably smoke inhalation, etc. The forensics team would the EXACT cause of death.
I love the variety of responses to this prompt and I’m looking forward to everyone’s responses to my Week (will there be any? Will my link thing work??). I really want to read We Come With This Place and it’s top of my buy-list though I might have to wait until my next Readings order …
I am working on my response to your week now Liz – Book pairings isn’t it? It’s my favourite Nonfiction week. I tend to forget to do the linking thing though. Will try to remember.
We come with this place is a wonderful book.