Any non-fiction suggestions out there?

[salopek]

I've just finished reading If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel which I rather enjoyed.

Can anyone recommend some good non-fiction reads? Politics, science, philosophy, human nature, auto/biographies..?

Two I've got on my own list to read next are The Woman In the Body (about menstruation through the ages) and The Body Keeps The Score (about trauma I think).

I've also read a lot of Francis Spufford over the past few months who crosses the fiction/nonfiction boundary often. My favourite of his was Red Plenty which I thought was completely astounding, about the late 50s in the Soviet Union, an extraordinary mix of research, fact and fictionalisation.

Thanks @annandale !! Will check them out.

Neurotribes is brilliant, as is The Tale of Duelling Neuroscientists.

I'm currently enjoying the audiobook of A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking.

And my mum has just finished and recommended This is going to hurt by Adam Kay, so that's next on my list.

Underground by Haruki Murakami is brilliant - interviews with survivors of the tokyo sarin gas attack. Really fascinating insight into Japanese culture and how cults draw in otherwise sensible people

Two that I have on my Kindle ready to read...

Let IT Go: The Memoirs of Dame Stephanie Shirley

'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick about life in North Korea

Nothing to envy is very good.

I recently read Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, which is about geopolitics and how countries' foreign policy is shaped by their geography. It sounds dry but is fascinating.

I'd second/third Nothing To Envy, Prisoners of Geography and Let IT Go, they're all really good.

I read a fair bit of non-fiction, particularly politics / economics / sociological. Over the last couple of years I've particularly enjoyed
The Life Project by Helen Pearson (absolutely fascinating book about longitudinal cohort studies and what we've learned from them)
Being Mortal by Henry Marsh (about our attitudes to ageing and mortality)
Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge (about the lives - and deaths - of all the children killed by guns on one single day in the US)
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil (about how computer algorithms invisibly affect our lives)
Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh (about how the author spent time living with the gangs on the South side of Chicago)
Watching the English by Kate Fox - about what it means to be English

Max Hastings - All Hell Let Loose.

It's a complete factual account of WW2, including anecdotes and comments from RW people which makes it very powerful.

Not an easy read, actually it makes depressing reading about the futility and brutality of man taking arms against fellow man. But it does explain a lot about so many things.

Dopeland - by Beth Macy
Very detailed look about how opioid addiction has spread through large swathes of America, and the difficulties and cost of treatment, and AA's failure to accept that medical assisted treatment is a feasible and necessary option for many individuals

If you want a piece of non-fiction that is just massively entertaining, read Ma'am Darling by Craig Brown. It's a biography of Princess Margaret, and I've probably recommended it several times already. It's hilarious and completely original.

Educated by Tara west over.

Another bloody day in the America by Gary younge

Throw away unopened by viv albertine

My life in houses by Margaret Forster.
Broken and betrayed by Jayne senior.

All bloody brilliant!

Sadik,

Being Mortal is by Atul Gawande
Do No Harm is by Henry Marsh
I have heard bits of both on the radio and bought both of them and intend to read them properly. They have clearly similar subject matter.

Emperor of All Maladies is about cancer and is sometimes not easy reading but it does have a very strong narrative and I found it really compelling.

Another tough, tough read but brilliant is Sarah Helm, If This is a Woman, about Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women. It's also very long.

Another Day in the Death of America is also very good.

A little light relief at least by comparison with the others: Once Upon a Time in the East: Growing Up in China by Xiaolu Guo is a literary memoir - I've read a few memoirs about China but this is one I liked better than some of the well-known ones like Wild Swans. The author's parents were of the generation caught up in the Cultural Revolution and she was born in 1973 so writes about growing up in post-Mao China of the 1980s and 1990s. She has also written several novels in English and now lives in London - before that she was a film maker. Some of her experiences must have been quite hard, but she's never self-pitying and she realises that she's actually very lucky compared to other Chinese women (unlike the authors of other more famous memoirs of China that have been very succesful in the West).

I also found another memoir, Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, fascinating, even though I don't read very many sciencey books.

'The Whisperers- Private Life In Stalin's Russia', by Orlando Figes is superb.

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Letters Between Six Sisters

Robert mcFarlane's books about landscape and language - The Old Ways & etc. so beautifully written and fascinating.

An older book which is a favourite of mine, The Emperor of Scent. It's an enthralling book about perfume, physics and the resistance of establishment science to new ideas. By Chandler Burr. And Luca Turin's perfume reviews if you're interested in scent.

Ones I'm looking forward to: Eve was shamed follow-up to the excellent Eve was framed by Helena Kennedy; the new biography of Robert Graves; Rage Becomes Her Soraya Chemaly; I am Dynamite biography of Nietzsche; Born to be posthumous biography of the marvellous illustrator Edward Gorey; Affluence without abundance: the disappearing world of the bushmen by James Suzman.

Cross-section of ones I've enjoyed: Emma Smith's account of working on the canals during WW2 Maidens' Trip, Clair Wills Lovers and Strangers about the lives of immigrants in Britain after WW2 ; Jean Lucey Pratt's diary; Philip Hoare England's Lost Eden about Victorian communes/utopian groups; anything written by Eula Biss; Annie Ernaux The Years'; Hermione Lee's brilliant biography of Virginia Woolf; Caroline Moorhead's books about women in France during WW2; Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation about her bookshop and her time publishing writers like James Joyce and hanging out in 1920s Paris; Catherine Merridale Lenin on the train'; Anne Applebaum Iron Curtain'; Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands'; Norman Mailer The Executioner's Song, Lara Feigel The Bitter Taste of Victory, James Baldwin's essays and I am not your negro; Akala's Natives and Afua Hirsch's Brit(ish)

Oops - sorry about that - I did mean Being Mortal, which I liked better than Do No Harm (though latter was still well worth reading), but was clearly thinking about both when I posted!

On a topical note, I'm about 6 chapters into Woodward's "Fear" on Trump's presidency. Very interesting (but reportage rather than analysis, so I'm finding some of the gaps in the narrative, and jumps from one incident to the next without any attempt to place it in a framing explanation a little bit irritating).

I have got 'if this is a woman' waiting to be read but need to find the right time to read it. Nothing to envy and first they killed my father/gulag are also similarly traumatic reads but worth it.
No regrets - Edith piaf
Mary beard - women and power
Names for the sea - about living in iceland
Romanovs
Gulp- about journey of food through our digestive system.
Reaching down the rabbit hole - insight into a neurologists everyday life
Any winners of the wellcome trust

I love Robert Macfarlane's books. They are wonderful love letters to our natural world. I've also really enjoyed Meadowland and The Running Hare by John Lewis-Stempel.

I've recently enjoyed Educated by Tara Westover and In The Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott. The latter is about her upbringing within the Exclusive Brethren cult (as she described it).

I've just abandoned The Secret Barrister. Having worked for many years in law (not any more, thankfully), I was finding it all a bit stressy, and that's not what I want from reading.

Heads up for The Salt Path by Raynor Winn on Kindle Daily Deal today 99p. This has been on my wishlist for a while and the waiting list at the library was long. It's about a couple who lose their home to massive debts following a business collapse, and also discover the husband is seriously ill. They have nothing to lose and decide to walk the south west coast path whilst they still can.

An old one which I still love is Bill Bryson "A short history of nearly everything". I also love "Shakespeare" by him.
If you like biographies, Claire Tomalin wrote a wonderful one on Samuel Pepys. I read it for a book group and wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. I've bought more biographies by her now.
I read quite a lot of non fiction but I'm a natural history geek so most of it is that genre. I like David Attenboroughs "Life Stories", "Trilobite" by Richard Fortey, "King Soloman's ring" by Konrad Lorenz, "The Song of the Dodo" by David Quammen etc etc. which isn't everyone's idea of a fun reading list!