If you take part in the booksphere of the internet in any capacity, you might have noticed, or already known, about a bookish initiative called Nonfiction November. Maintained by the incomparable abookolive on youtube, this challenge is meant to give readers the space to explore nonfiction options that they might not otherwise pick up in their casual reading. There are many fantastic guides explaining what Nonfiction November is all about, but here I want to offer a breakdown of the many different kinds of nonfiction that you might want to consider picking up.
Like the label “fiction”, “nonfiction” encompasses so many different mediums and genres of work. Although most people know nonfiction as the textbooks and articles that we consume on a day-to-day basis as students and citizens, it is so much more than the dry and dreary publications it has come to be stereotyped as. Nonfiction is a vibrant and engaging sector of publishing, and can range from memoirs and autobiographies to self-help and science publications. If there’s any subject at all that you’re interested in, there is almost certainly a nonfiction book out there for you.
When I first started my journey into reading nonfiction at the start of the year, I made it a goal for myself to try to read one nonfiction book for every fiction book I read. The easiest way into the world of nonfiction, for me, was the memoir. I love sitting down with someone’s memoir and really digging into their emotions about a certain element of their life-– oftentimes, their childhood, or their marriage, or aspects of their career (I love a good musician memoir). If this sounds like something that might interest you, some of my personal favorites include The Storyteller by Dave Grohl, Know My Name by Chanel Miller and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.
Although memoir can be one of the easier ways to get into nonfiction, it doesn’t need to be where you stop if you find yourself enjoying nonfiction for a change. Another great path into nonfiction can be books related to your major or field of study, or perhaps one that you’d like to learn more about. And no, these luckily aren’t your textbooks. If you’re interested in art, you could check out Con/Artist by famous art forger Tony Tetro, or Brushed Aside by Noah Charney, which looks at the forgotten history of women in the art world. If science is more your speed, the works of Ed Yong such as An Immense World or I Contain Multitudes cover the world of animal senses and the life of the microbes that help us survive, respectively.
There’s the quintessential celebrity memoir (we all had Paris Hilton and Britney’s memoirs on hold at the library the moment they were released this year, right?), which often get major buzz; Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died is probably one of the biggest memoirs of the last couple of years, although Prince Harry of Sussex’s Spare also popped onto the scene, traumatizing everyone in the process. And that’s not all. There are numerous books on the political sphere that are published every year, so if there’s something you’re passionate about, you can pick it up and read it at any time.
Nonfiction comes in so much variety and is published by so many people and presses, that it can be a little overwhelming when you realize just how much there is if you’re new to the world of it. But I encourage you this Nonfiction November to at the very least look up one kind of nonfiction you think you might be interested in. Although nonfiction has the reputation of being dry and daunting, I promise you, one reader to another, that it can open you up to an even more fascinating and enriching world of reading than you might already be having. And hey, it also means you can pick up one or two interesting facts to drop at the table this Thanksgiving, if you’re brave enough.
