Does anyone else love Non-fiction on unusual/niche topics?

[ShelfObsessed]

I’m always looking for non-fiction books on unusual topics and would appreciate any recommendations.

As an example here’s last month’s non fiction haul mostly picked up from charity shops. I can’t personally recommend them as I haven’t read most yet but I’ll list them should anyone else care to take a look at them.

Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go by Emily Cockayne.

Pickled, Potted and Canned: The Story of Food Preserving by Sue Shepard

Strange Antics: A History of Seduction by Clement Knox

Eject! Eject! by John Nichol. (A History of the Ejection Seat.

Tomatoland: How modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook.

Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine Forever by Bijal P Trivedi.

Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee - The Dark History of the Food Cheats by Bee Wilson

The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history by Richard Girling

Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles by Travis Elborough.

Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water by Vicki Valosik.

Any other suggestions would be much appreciated.

TIA

I love reading random non fiction on kindle unlimited too.
I've read loads on decluttering for example.

I read a book called 'Dust', can't remember the author, it was really interesting about what makes up dust - a lot of it in our homes is animal dander and pollen.
‘After the Ice' by Steven Mithin - a history of prehistoric expansion and settlement after the Ice Age - a sort of social history about the homes and lives of prehistoric people throughout the expansion into Europe-well written and a riveting read. (I love books about prehistory - Francis Pryor is a good author).
a history of tea - sorry can't remember the author.

Several years ago I read, and enjoyed, One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver. I feel it would be right up your street, OP.

www.amazon.co.uk/One-Good-Turn-Natural-Screwdriver/dp/0684867303

Have a look at Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair by Emma Tarlo. Really interesting!

Thanks all! These all sound perfect for me and I definitely need to read a book on decluttering. I’ll have to check out Kindle Unlimited.

I think you would love Cod by Mark Kurlansky. Another suggestion is Kitchen Confidential by Boudain. Under Pressure by Richard Humphries. I also enjoy reading niche non fiction.

Yes. I loved Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

London's Local Railways by Alan A Jackson. It contains my favourite sentence anywhere, a description of the vast but barely used terminus at Crystal Palace High Level in its last years: 'Rain poured down through the shattered roof at High Level, encouraging a luxuriant growth of ferns and fungi on the rotting timber platforms, beneath which rats - far outnumbering the passengers - scurried and scavenged unhindered.'

I've got one called The Cloud Collector's Handbook by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, which is basically a list of umpteen different cloud types and you can tick them off as you see them. A bit like one of the old I-Spy type books they used to do.
The author is a founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society.

You might like various things Rose George has written: Deep Sea and Foreign Going (about container ships), The Big Necessity (sewage, toilets etc), Nine Pints (blood) and others. She has a very readable style and actually gets out and talks to real people in a very interesting way.

Sophy Roberts The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a good one.

East West Street by Philippe Sands, about the making of new laws of genocide and crimes against humanity, to try the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg

I also enjoyed one about a woman who decided to work her passage home on a cargo ship instead of flying. I can't remember what it was called, it was one short word beginning with J - Jeka or Jenga or something like that.

This is right up my street, I love a random non fiction book, mine are often sparked off by a random thought of 'I'd like to know more about that' - like last year where something on social media about boat to boat refuelling for the Falklands war made me wonder about the sheer logistics of fighting at that distance with no close bases so I read a few books about that. I spent a lot of time in Paris last summer, so read a lot of books about women in the resistance and SOE as well as one on the lives of 'regular' women in Paris just making it through WW2.
I very much enjoyed Breath from Salt and East West Street.

The Tulip by Anna Parvord

I read a lot of history books

You should try collections of essays. George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Primo Levi, Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves, William Hazlitt, Anthony Burgess, etc all wrote essays and bits of journalism on a huge range of topics. Orwell especially wrote some wonderful pieces on all kinds of random stuff, from toads to junk shops.

Just My Type: About Fonts, by Simon Garfield. Lovely, interesting book.

You might enjoy The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. It tells the story of his family through a collection of Japanese netsuke. I found it absolutely fascinating, and then saw some netsuke in the V&A which added an extra dimension.

@Rowena191 I adored that book!

The house on the lake is another good one. It tells 20th century history through the lens of one house & it's owners over the years

https://www.thomasharding.com/thehousebythelakesummary

Sorry, it's The House By The Lake by Thomas Harding

I like maths books eg. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker and Fermat's last Theorem by Simon Singh, also the What if? books by Randell Munroe (eg. How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?)

Also enjoyed a book about the discovery of garden plants we take for granted - I think it was called The Plant Hunters - and I also like books about explorers in general - "The Invention of Nature" about Humbolt is fascinating, and there's one about Raffles "The Duke of Puddle Dock: travels in the footsteps of Stamford Raffles". I think my love of explorers started with The Kon-Tiki Expedition which I read when I was about 10.
If you can get hold of a copy, read "Official Secret: The Remarkable Story of Escape Aids - Their Invention, Production - and the Sequel" by Christopher Clayton-Hutton. It's about stuff smuggled into POW camps in WW2 to aid escape like compasses in buttons.. I met the author when I was very small and he gave my mother a copy of his book.

Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell - a biography of John Donne, "the poet of love, sex and death". I just love her writing.

At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch - a history of nighttime. I loved imagining the world before electric light and the stuff about two-phase sleep.

Seashaken Houses by Tom Nancollas - a history of lighthouses - TBR but looking forward to it.

In that case you will love 'Prisoners of Geography' by Tim Marshall. He writes about how physical geography, rivers, mountains, deserts, deep water ports etc affect so much about our cultures, economics, international relations, politics. Everything!

He talks about how we could only have won the Falklands War because we happened to own Ascension Island.

Also, why it actually makes perfect economic, strategic and political sense for Trump to want to purchase Greenland. Honestly. Several US presidents have wanted to buy it, the most recent was Truman back in the 1950s!

I recommend Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. It’s all about fungi and I found it a very enjoyable and interesting read

Super Infinite is a great book.

I love the Very Short Introduction To…series. They cover pretty much anything you might want a good overview of, and they’re written by top academics although in a very accessible style. I’m on Hinduism at the moment.

I really loved The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf. A fascinating exploration of how the Earth and all living creatures need night, and the damage done by light pollution.

I like biology, so I submit Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.