Best non-fiction

So You've Been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson
Men Who Hate Women - Laura Bates
What Is A Girl Worth? - Rachael Denhollander
Jews Don't Count - David Baddiel
The Secret Barrister - Anon
Bad Blood - John Carreyrou
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skoot
How Not To Be A Boy - Robert Webb
All The Young Men - Ruth Coker Burks
Ride of a Lifetime - Robert Iger

Tim Marshall writes very accessible books about geopolitics such as Prisoners of Geography. Got me back in to reading non-fiction again.

I’m nearly finished the audiobook Metaphysical Animals by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Racheal Wiseman. I’ve really enjoyed it, it’s based on the lives of Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe.

It does cover philosophy in quite a bit of detail and who all the key thinkers were in Oxford/Cambridge and some parts of Europe. As this period covers the early days of women being able to graduate from Oxford and the Second World War the social history included has been really fascinating.

Usually, when you read biographies about men they are painted as either gods or monsters, but all four women are presented as fairly normal women, trying to negotiate life but with a lot of thought given to philosophical ideas.

Joan Didion, 'The Center Will Not Hold'.
Also, 'The Year of Magical Thinking'.

Antony Beevor, 'Stalingrad'.

Julia Boyd, 'Travelers in the Third Reich'.

Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, 'Shattered' (about Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign).

East West Street by Philippe Sands or indeed anything that's won the Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize.

Crown and Sceptre - Tracy Borman

Biography of people you're interested in - depends what you're into!

To add, as well as her battle with logging companies, it's about her work on how (and how much/sophisticatedly) trees communicate with each other and use fungus to do so. Utterly fascinating.

The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley is a book which is a mine of information on nature, the weather etc - An enjoyable read for a hill walker, I like to dip in and out of as it is full of facts.

Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest by Suzanne Simard was enjoyable - a woman's battle to change environmentally unfriendly logging traditions in Canada.

Bad blood by John Carreyrou! Don't google it as there is so much information out there after they made two documentaries etc just cold read x

Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World
Tracey Borman, Thomas Cromwell

I've just read Under Fire by Naomi Clifford - based on the diaries of a female volunteer ambulance driver in WW2 - really fascinating and well written.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/59067795-under-fire

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water by Adam Nicholson is my current read and is beautifully written, about rock pools developing on a remote Scottish beach. Much more engaging than it sounds. I also liked his first book, Sea Room, because I lived in the area he was writing about at the time (also remote and Scottish.

I'd also recommend The Secret World of Weather and The Natural Navigator both by Tristan Gooley. I thought I looked closely at the landscape (I used to be a Geography teacher) but he takes it many levels higher and it's really enriched my life.

Off to check your posts for other recommendations!

I'm on a bit of a nature-writing thing at the mo, so my first list would be:
H Is For Hawk, Helen Macdonald
Finding the Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard
The Seaweed Collector's Handbook, Miek Zwamborn
Corvus: A Life with Birds, Esther Woolfson
Adrift: A Secret Life of London's Waterways, Helen Babbs. Not exactly nature, but the author and partner live on a canal boat. There is some nice nature writing but also interesting stuff about London's waterways, currently and in history.

Also, totally different, Just My Type by Simon Garfield, about fonts: who designed some of the most well-known ones and why, what they have come to stand for, how they work. Very witty and easy to read, as well as fascinating.

Memoirs: The Moon's a Balloon by David Niven is a scream; he was quite the character and what an era he lived through.
Haven't read it yet myself but am keen to read Brian Cox's autobiog Putting The Rabbit in the Hat.

And Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain. An astonishing, sad, funny, deeply personal account of how she went from a sheltered bourgeois life to being a young VAD nurse in WW2.

Some authors to consider, but ~I dunno what you like
Bruce Chatwin
Dervla Murphy
AJ Jacobs
Jessica Bruder
Helen MacDonald (H is for Hawk)
Jeanette Walls
Kathleen Dayus
George Orwell (eg Homage to Catalonia)

I read a book about Kent Hop pickers but can't find link, now.

I struggle with fiction, tbh, it's so silly!

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan.
Posted my review of this on another thread too - it's horrifying. The writer has encephalitis but is consistently wrongly diagnosed. At one point a top neurologist tells her Mum she's just a party girl who has been drinking too much.
It's very engagingly written (Cahalan is a journalist) and her boyfriend and Dad emerge as heroes who fight her corner and ensure she is supported to make a full recovery.
I also recently completed The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn. Beautifully written.
Now reading Wintering by Katherine May which seems appropriate in February.
This has been a year of reading non- fiction. For some reason I just can't focus on fiction at all.

I'm a voracious reader and prefer non-fiction. Among my favourites over the years:

Bill Bryson [all of them!]

Josie Dew and her various travels with her bike
[free to borrow]

archive.org/search.php?query=josie%20dew

Danny Baker's autobiographical volumes are entertaining [also on archive.org]

Oh, and I mustn't forget Karen Armstrong's astonishing memoir of her life as a novice in a Roman Catholic convent in the 1960s. Read it many years ago but it stays with me.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Everything You Ever Taught Me - I walked from Mexico to Canada whilst fat, forty-something, female, funny and nearly four years sober. Oh, and a pandemic broke out right after I started.

Previously I had hiked from the sofa to the fridge and back. I considered camping a loathsome pursuit.

I still do.

I recommend “The hidden life of trees” by Peter Wohlleben. I promise that if you read it, you will never look at a tree in the same way again! So many “what the f*ck did I just read” moments.

I read Empire of pain about the Sacklers over Christmas and it is brilliant. Also Hidden Figures about the amazing black women who worked for NASA as calculators in the 1960s and worked out the maths for the moon landings.

These are all quite popular so you may have already read but here are some I’ve enjoyed recently.
In to Thin Air - Jon Krakauer - a first hand account of the Everest disaster in 1996

The Five - Hallie Rubenhold
Delves into the lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11
by Garrett Graff

A really comprehensive collection of first hand stories from 9/11.

The Glass Castle - Jeanette Waters
A memoir from a lady who’s parents are truly dysfunctional.

I'm reading Marina Wheeler's, The Lost Homestead atm and enjoying it.

Jon Ronson- the psychopath test
Mary Roach is a very engaging science writer also.