To ask you to name-drop your favourite non-fiction books?

[Blinketyblink]

Just that really - please and thanks!

Has anyone else read A London Child of the 1870s, a memoir first published in the 1930s and republished by Persephone Books? I read it a couple of years ago and it's stuck with me ever since. Nothing exciting happens for most of it, but it's a fascinating window into a Victorian middle class childhood.

Yes, I really like that; and even more, the sequel, 'A London Girl of the 1880s'' about her school experiences (with Miss Buss as headmistress), higher education (when this was rare for women) and beginnings of her teaching career.

I am a bit fan of Phillippe Sands who is also an academic and human rights barrister who prosecutes leaders accused of genocide in The Hague. He is one of those amazing polymaths like Jared diamond and I have a secret crush on him. His book ‘east west street’, in which family biography meets the invention of the European Convention on Human Rights and the evolution of crimes against humanity, is fascinating and won the bailie Gifford prize. I’ve only just started his new one - ‘the Ratline’ about a nazi leader who escaped justice.

Another marvellous non-fiction book is Weatherland by Alexandra Harris.

This book charts the weather in the British isles across history by exploring the evidence left behind by e.g. paintings, books, poems, floor and wall tiles etc. It is just fabulous.

Rena's Promise by Rena Kornreich Gelison- The story of two sisters in Auschwitz.

The Diary of Anne Frank.

Night Song of The Last Tram by Robert Douglas, a wonderful and very poignant autobiography about a 1940/50's Glasgow childhood.

Hadley Freeman house of glass

Definitely The Five. Such an important set of untold stories of the women - daughters, sisters, wives, mothers - killed by Jack the Ripper.

A top favourite non-fiction book of mine is ‘Holy Shit - a brief history of swearing’ by Melissa Mohr. This is brilliantly written and it charts how our attitudes gradually shifted over time with social changes in religious belief and in opportunities for privacy. It looks at people’s attitudes to issues like privacy, sex, going to the toilet etc over the centuries and how the pendulum shifted over time so that we became less concerned about swearing eg ‘by god’s bones’ etc (which would have terrified someone in the Middle Ages) and far more concerned about rules about privacy eg when going to the loo. I’m not explaining it v well but it’s a great book - serious intent but v accessible.

Anything by Betty MacDonald especially The Plague and I or Onions in The Stew. They are fairly obscure, I’ve never met anyone else who’s read them but they are fabulous and hilarious.

Another vote for Horse Boy

The Yorkshire Shepherdess books are a nice, easy read.

I like medical autobiographical books - these are excellent:-

In Shock - Dr Rana Awdish

Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard -
The Blink of an Eye: How I Died and Started Living

Do No Harm - Henry Marsh

Intensive Care: The Story of a Nurse - Echo Heron

Gulag Archipelago.

The psychopath test- or anything else by Jon ronson.
No stone unturned- about a group of scientists and engineers who came together to find the missing remains of murder victims and help catch the killers.
Any Bill Bryson.

Finding Peggy by Meg Henderson. Growing up in Glasgow in the 50s and 60s.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe. Coming of age in working class Nottingham. A fictionalised account and lots of dialect. It is pretty accurate though. My Dad grew up in this area.

If this is a man/ The Truce by Primo Levi, Italian chemist, science fiction writer and resistance fighter about his experience in Auschwitz and subsequent chaotic journey home. It is an uplifting book, one that stays with you.

@MadMadMadamMim ohhh hope you enjoy Mont Blanc, it's one of my "go tos" for presents. It has started me off reading about women explorers (I've read a lot about Shackleton, Nansen, Scott etc but it's all men)

Who mentioned The Ravine? Is that about Babi Yar? I might have to try that.

Why e = mc2 and why it matters (I think that's the title) by Brian cox and Jeff Forshaw explains the theory of relativity using only basic trigonometry

The Body: A guide for occupants - Bill Bryson

Women of Steel: How Sheffield’s Feisty Factory Sisters Helped Win the War - Michelle Rawlins

Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World - Sue Sheppard

The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit - Helena Atlee (this is a history of lemon growing in Italy and it sounds ... odd but it is absolutely fantastic)

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics - Cynthia Enloe (pretty much any of her books published after this one, too)

Thanks for starting this, OP, so many to add to my list

Supper With the Crippens by David James Smith. All of his stuff is worth a read but this one is particularly good.

I'd forgotten about Betty MacDonald! Another fan here, I'll just add Anybody Can Do Anything to the list, about her and her family’s experiences in the Depression. Brilliant.

The Unfolding of Language - a most incredible book on the theory of the evolution of grammar! It blew my mind.

The Kingdom of Speech - Tom Wolfe. Fascinating essays about linguistics and language.

Other Minds - a book about octopuses, but really about animal consciousness and theories of consciousness in general.

Oh and the Lillian Bekwith books about how she gave up teaching in England and went off to live in a croft on a Scottish island

Absolutely love this thread - making diligent notes as I go through!

Now looking through my bookshelves to see what I can suggest.

-Wild Swans by Jung Chang
-Girt (a very irreverent take on Australian history!) by David Hunt
-The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
-London: the biography by Peter Ackroyd

Great thread! Have often thought Mn could use a non-fiction section.

Wild by Jay Griffiths

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (a fascinating look at Native American ways of viewing our relationship with the environment)

The Worm Forgives the Plough by John Stewart Collis, an intellectual who gave up a job offer with the War Office in WW2 in favour of joining the Land Army

The Way Home (Tales from a Life Without Technology) and The Moneyless Man by Mark Boyle

King Leopold's Ghost: looks at the brutal exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold of Belgium

Silk Road Adventure by Clare Bridges Watson who crosses Central Asia on horseback in the 90s

Will second those who've mentioned The Silk Roads and Prisoners of Geography, too.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
Read this for the first time aged 11 as it was a text for my dsis O level. Couldn't put it down.

Yes, loved this. Off on foot with a knapsack, some cheese and bread and not much else. Sleeping under hedges and getting money playing the violin. An account of a world which had gone even when he wrote the book about 30 years after the events.

In a similar vein but less cheery, Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.

Yay @Giggorata! I love her SO much as you can see by my username!

Lion/A long way home...Saroo Brierley
Saw the film before so knew the story but still enjoyed the book.

Freakonomics and for children A street through Time . I think that’s what it’s called