As I’ve gotten older I’ve had the delight of falling into the varied world of nonfiction. I am a forever-curious person (did you know that “flops” and “nines” and “banana dosage” are all units of measurement?), which means that nonfiction will always have something to interest and entertain me.
There are books written about pretty much anything, like this one about salt. As a firm believe that every little thing is surprisingly awesome, I adore deep explorations into what seemed simple or mundane but is actually incredible. It’s much the same how I feel about people. (….usually.)
Often times, nonfiction also makes me a laugh a lot, because the authors can write the way they might talk and take a conversational tone. This includes jokes, and who doesn’t love jokes?
Here’s a range of some of my favorite nonfiction, some of which really changed my life. I can track important events in my life through my nonfiction reading, but some of it is also just really fun and cool. Why not have both? 😊
This is a recent re-read that rather inspired this post. I’ve had some crazy life decision being thrown at me and with that comes all the requisite fear of making said decision plus then living with that decision. Anyway – this book is my master guide to dealing with bad days. It makes me laugh, cry, and feel better. There are the deep talks about how to handle your own depression and bad days, how to help others through theirs, what hers are like, and tales of how she lives aggressively full throttle on the good days. It’s everything I need when I’m starting to feel terrifyingly overwhelmed.
This was my first “sit at a coffee shop and read a book” book. And my god, was it a good choice. It’s a perfect example of a nonfiction topic I love because I know just about nothing about morgue-life (or morgue-death?). Having taken a forensics class, I know enough about other death-stuff to be really interested and not grossed out. Again, this was also hilarious. I love that all the questions were from kids, because I still have a lot of those same questions too.
I lived in Korea for a while, and I absolutely fell in love with it. To be honest, it kills me daily that I’m not there now. And yes, I do mean literally now, even though I lived in Daegu which is currently a quarantine zone for Covid-19. This book is primarily in Korea’s northern c ounterpart, but realistically these are the same people. Yet with drastically different lives. I’ve read a lot of nonfiction about North Korea, but this was by far my favorite because it’s handled with thorough interviews of people from various walks of life and reads almost like a novel through the recreations of scenes and included emotion. It’s absolutely stunning, and humanizing to a place that needs it. The amount of general ignorance I encountered when telling Americans I was going to live / had lived in Korea was painfully revealing.
Ahhhh, WoW Classic. You triggered this all over again. World of Warcraft is (if you’re somehow unfamiliar) an online roleplaying game where you collect stuff, kill stuff, and do stuff. It’s amazing. And last year the company re-released the game as it was when it originally released YEARS ago. There was a huge resurgence of players and excitement, and part of my own excitement was to finally track down Felicia Day’s memoir. She had issues with addiction to the game in some depressive times, but there’s more to her book than that. Ultimately for my life, this means I was playing the video game, reading about someone who played the video game, listening to other people play the video game, and watching a show about people who played the video game. ….It’s a good game. (Though not so much at the moment…)
I have more I want to highlight, but also want to do them justice, so they’ll be in the second part of this post!
My Book Joy 
I love Felicia Day’s memoir! For me it was SWTOR instead of WOW lol.
I also just read In Order to Live, a memoir by a North Korean woman, so I would love to read more nonfiction about NK. I’ll have to check that one out.
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Ohhh yeah, since WoW is so meh right now, my beau has gotten really into SWTOR. I hear a lot of laughing and cursing, so I guess he likes it. xD
Definitely recommend this for your next book on the topic, then! I’ve read several, and this was by far the most informative, interesting, emotional, and honest. And frankly easy to read, too, as it’s style keeps it from getting bogged down by sheer data.
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Nice one 👍
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