Non-fiction recommendations?

[moutonfou]

I'm going on holiday and want to stock up on some reads. I love non-fiction that just grabs me away from my life and into a completely different life - in the past that's been as different as a book about an Everest disaster, to a sports biography, to a historical biography, so I'm interested in anything.

Any recommendations?

Bill Bryson's 'Shakespeare' is good. Good descriptions of Shakespeare's life but also of Elizabethan London. An easy read but also v informative.

'Planet Parent' by Mark Woods is good if you are a parent or interested in parenting. Each chapter looks at a different aspect of raising kids and explains his it's done differently in different parts of the world. Again, v informative but also an easy read.

Malcolm Gladwell is good. Only read 'What the Dog Saw' but I know he's written others.

The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay.

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and the sequel The Duchess of Bloomsbury St.

Eleven Minutes Late by Mathew Engel.

Champagne and Polar Bears by Marie Teche

How I Lived a Year On One Pound A Day by Kath Kelly

Stasiland by Anna Flinder
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
Frank Skinner by Frank Skinner
You Just Don't Understand by Deborah Tannen
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

I know it's a million years old now but Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch really does still have something.

'Running with the Kenyans' is an interesting read if you have any interest in distance running. I also enjoyed 'A year of living Danishly'.

'Touching the Void' has already been mentioned and is excellent. In the past I have also enjoyed 'I dreamed of Africa' and 'Out of Africa'. 'The Ukimwi Road' also sticks out as a good read.

I haven't read them yet but I have 'Daring to Drive' and 'Nothing to Envy' downloaded for my next long flight.

Jon Ronson: You've been publicly shamed and The Psychopath Test were both riveting

Ghosts of the tsunami ( richard lloyd parry) and Fukushima (mark willacy) were both excellent.

Billy Ruffian - a 'biography' of The Bellerophon, a ship in Nelson's navy famous for bringing Napoleon to Britain.

Feet in the Clouds - a book about fell running.

Angry White Pajamas - training in martial arts with the Tokyo riot police

The Right Stuff - test pilots working on the space program.

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes - living with an Amazonian tribe. (Disclaimer - although I enjoyed this a lot, I am now aware that the language theory propounded in it is not universally accepted)

Also came on to say The Right Stuff. Read on tube to work eons ago and kept crying at the beginning chapters.

1913 :The Year Before the Storm by Florian Illies. It's a quirky and amusing chronological account of what lots of different artists, writers, philosophers etc were doing around Europe in that year. Including Hitler. Much more interesting than it sounds.

At Home by Bill Bryson. Stories of houses and the rooms in them and how people live as they did and do.

Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose. The story of the British glider troops who were some of the first to land in Normandy on D Day.