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Non-fiction suggestions


Siapi

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Hey!

 

Summer is rapidly approaching and like every year, I'm compiling a list of books I want to read over the summer. I've recently started getting into a lot of non-fiction - mostly on the economics crisis and game theory and laws related to the internet/media. It's got my interest increasing in non-fiction.

 

Do you guys have any non-fiction books that you would suggest I read? They can be about anything really. As long as you thought they were well-written and worth reading.

 

Thanks!

~ Sia

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I'd like to add to Shooting Star's suggestion (I love memoirs) with

 

* Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (another memoir - Irish childhood this time)

*Amusing Ourselves to Death* Neil Postman (social studies? More like a long interesting essay...on the effects of TV on our minds)

*Blue Latitudes* (Travel: In Captain Cook's footsteps - funny and poignant, very vivid)

*Nickle and Dimed* by Barbara Ehrenreich (reportage about working class life in the States- it's shockingly brill.)

 

Check the categories and comments on Amazon.... You'll get some really good ideas from there. Doesn't mean you have to become a customer. 

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When you walk into brick-and-mortar bookstore (where-ever they still exist on the high-street), it is hard not to notice how much space is given over to non-fiction. And in particular, to the novel. It has become "mono-culture". I guess this is what people want. How much of that is the result of our unvarying diet at school, I wonder? English A Lit. = novel (sometimes drama and even less poetry)

 

....So it's kinda interesting (and unusual) to see someone asking for ... non-fiction leisure reading.   :zomg:

 

I'm not a big fan of novels as you can probably tell. Give me memoir, travel, history, anthropology, science, any day. And, when it's good, reportage and journalism.  I suspect much of this predilection had something to do with what was in my parent's study-library. 

 

 

 

I guess you already have your reading list sorted out, but I can't help adding these two:

 

._The Future Eaters_ by Tim Flannery.  Really well-written. If you like to read about Australia's megafauna, ecology and unsustainable future.

 

_COSMOS_Carl Sagan. How could I have forgotten this ?   A lovely mix of history, astronomy, biology written in a lyrical style that is distinctly Saganesque. 

 

:coolg: Enjoy your summer reading   :)  :icecream:

Edited by Blackcurrant
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I just recently started enjoying non-fiction as well. Before now, I've always stuck to novels and other fiction. I never realized how wonderful non-fiction can be!

 

If you're in to biology, especially evolution, I definitely recommend Richard Dawkins. He's my favorite non-fiction author. His writing style may not appeal to everyone, but I absolutely love all of his books that I've read - which so far have been The God Delusion, The Blind Watchmaker, and The Selfish Gene. 

 

I also recommend Behind the Beautiful Forevers. I don't remember the author, but it takes place in a slum in India. I thought it was incredible.

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I would recommend "The Glass castle" by Jeannette Walls. It is a story about a journalism who writes about her childhood and her dysfunctional family. I think they are making  movie about it too.

Edited by Zulu
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