NonFiction November

Kim, at Sophisticated Dorkiness, is once again hosting Nonfiction November. I'm so excited about it, in fact, that I set Margaret Atwood aside for now.

I'll be getting back to my Fall Feasting reading list, starting off with Steve Dublanico's Waiter Rant, then I'll get back to Annie Hawes' Extra Virgin which I got about half through before I set it aside for R.I.P. X in October. After that? Maybe Richard Horan's Harvest: An Adventure into the Heart of America's Family Farms. Maybe The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian. Or maybe, finally, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

For week one, Kim is asking that we take a look back at our year of nonfiction so far. This is going to be a little embarrassing for me, not having read nearly as much nonfiction as I wish I had. But...here goes.

What Is Your Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year?
This one's kind of a tie - for making me laugh uproariously, it would have to be Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened; for teaching me and scaring me at the same time it would be Brain On Fire: My Month of Madness by Susan Catalan.

What Nonfiction Book Have You Recommended Most?
I'd have to be cautious about recommending either of the above. You can't be too sensitive and appreciate Lawson. On the other hand, you have to be good with going into medical details for Cahalan. So it might well end up being Extra Virgin because you can never go wrong with recommending a fish-out-of-water, stranger-in-a-new-land book.

What Is One Topic or Type of Nonfiction You Haven't Read Enough Of Yet?
Hmmm. I don't know that I have one topic or type that I would want to focus more on. I've got a wide interest in terms of nonfiction. I'd be tempted to say it would be easier for me to give a topic that I'm not interested in, like economics. But then I do enjoy the "Freakonomics" podcast so I'm bound to read about economics before long. Or political biographies. But then there are a lot of political historical figures I'm interested in reading about. Maybe I could narrow that down to current political biographies. Because I have no interest in reading the approved version of some candidate's life and philosophy nor the salacious version.

What Are You Hoping To Get Out of Participating In Nonfiction November?
I'm hoping to double the number of nonfiction books I've read this year. There are so, so many of them I want to read!

Are you a nonfiction reader? What's your all-time favorite nonfiction book?