Non-fiction books for bright 14 year old girl

[Tillytwaddle]

Hello. I sometimes see these threads and get really good recommendations. This is for my niece.

Does anyone have any ideas for non-fiction? I wondered about Helen Lewis’s Difficult Women, or Sophie’s World. CS Lewis’s Surprised by Joy? but I’m a bit out of touch. Any ideas?

That’s a good point @AffIt . Travel!

Durrell is always good.

Something which is fiction but is a memoir, Cider with Rosie. If she enjoys reading about people and places this is nice.

What about books of women explorers just as Freya Stark?
The Silent Spring?
This is fiction but too close to non-fiction: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. It’s Not Science Fiction | Bill McKibben | The New York Review of Books (nybooks.com)

Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs and her second similar type book titled Wild: Tales from Early medieval England.

Anne Frank's Diary?

Books about Mary Shelley?

How about some philosophy books

Such as
Descartes,
Ayn Rand - Fountainhead / atlas shrugged
Jordan Peterson - 12 rules for life
Ichiro Kishimi - The courage to be disliked

The golden notebook - Doris Lessing

Not exactly non fiction but she might like
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow- Zevin

Diary of Anne Frank
Maybe The Bell Jar

Enthusiastically seconding all of these 👍

@Tillytwaddle further travel recommendations - basically everything by Dervla Murphy and Josie Dew.

Bloody brilliant.

She might also enjoy historical fiction, as a sort of "bridge" between fiction and non-fiction. I got really into it at that age!

Agree with difficult women. That's a good one.

I'm currently reading 'Other Minds, the Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life' - it's about octopuses, but more about the evolution of sentience. The concepts are heavy but the writing style is accessible for a teen. I bet she'd find it pretty mind blowing, like I have.

Invisible Women, Rebellious by Dr Sam Collins, A Little Gay History are all interesting reads. The latter talks about how little gay women are portrayed in art history

I was thinking philosophy too. I only got into it at A level but would have enjoyed younger I think.

Bertrand Russell writes accessibly. Or maybe Hannah Arendt, she tackles interesting topics.

For history how about the 'voices from...' books. There is one 'voices from' chernobyl (which was the inspiration behind the TV show), and another 'voices from the holocaust'. Collections of first person accounts and witness statements from people who were there. Fascinating. Very heavy, but mature teens can cope with that.

Bill Bryson books are good for people with a scientific/medical/history interest.

two pence to cross the Mersey and the other 3 books that follow it

Dave Goulson Garden Jungle, very funny and readable. It looks like it's a gardening book but it's not really, although it's full of ideas she could put into practice if it catches her imagination.

Link

Lark Rise to Candleford

Am getting loads of inspiration from everyone's contributions - have a 12 yr old DS here that may like some of the suggestions.

My addition- "a sting in the tale" by Dave Goulson. A very interesting book on bee societies and how they live, and studies about how integral bees are as pollinators.

I believe there are also a couple of teenage friendly books written by the author of "sapiens".

Something that explains the concept of compound interest and finances.

Jasmine Birtles co-wrote a brilliant one which is now out of print, but well worth picking up a second hand copy as the fundamentals will still be sound. Or there are probably plenty of newer books on the same topic.

Thinking, fast and slow is interesting.

I second Wild Swans and Invisible Women.

Prisoners of Geography is a good read.

I hated Sophies's World fwiw. Kept on reading in the hope that it would be worth it in the end, but it wasn't!

DD is currently reading The Courage to be Disliked and seems to be enjoying it.

E H Carr's "What is history" is a classic worth reading and not too long.

Janina Ramirez Femina - about women who were written out of history