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My favorite non-fiction recently was Trash! A Garbageman’s Story. I was sold at a memoir from a garbageman, but he’s also a great writer and it was a super entertaining book.
Thank you for mentioning this! I often trawl through lists online to find nonfiction reads but I know there's so much to discover that may not be featured elsewhere. What a great concept
I've been using LibraryThing for a long while. Thanks to this thread, I went and finally checked who owns that thing and sure enough, Amazon has their dirty hands in it. I guess its time to move to StoryGraph lol
You'll have to dig through all my fiction picks but I've got some non fiction in there as well. Probably nothing you haven't already considered though.
Wow, you are a big reader! Even with a lot of fiction, I enjoy absorbing the books in their totality, partly for recommendations but also to get to see someone else's tastes and interests. Thank you
Bookwyrm is a federated version of this, probably worth considering if you've come to Lemmy.
That is a really good consideration. From what I can see it has quite a small user base (but hopefully growing) and no app - but do you use it? How do you find it?
I do use it. I found it because I was trying to get away from goodreads and searched for federated alternatives. I also am on storygraph and was on one called Orkut (or something like that).
There is an app, but its mostly just a web view as far as I can tell. I do find the interface a little early web compared to storygraph.
Fwiw the feature I care about most with these services is book tracking, and bookwyrm solves that. Sharing books with my network would be nice but I haven't managed to pull people from goodreads. I'm still gently attempting, but its difficult
I think we've got some overlap in our interests. My profile. I've been trying to read more fiction recently so you might want to filter to non-fiction to hide all the Terry Pratchett!
Some recent specifics that might be interesting:
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Dodds Pennock
They aren't all by authors named Caroline by the way.
Yessss! This excites me an enormous amount. Thank you for mentioning those two. Even from a quick initial look I can see some I've read and enjoyed and some I absolutely want to add to my list. The Agony of Eros - I would never have come across that but I'm intrigued
Every time I come across snippets of Byung-Chul Han's philosophy I find it so interesting. Unfortunately, I haven't got around to his books yet. Something to look forward to, I guess.
I'm glad my lists are helpful!
So, I no longer have Storygraph (I wanted something with an API, and after switching to Hardcover, I didn't want to keep up with two platforms), so I can't link that unfortunately. However, since we share some of the same interests and I've been keeping a list of nonfiction reads that I've enjoyed or find intriguing, I'll type them here.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, trans. by Shaun Whiteside
Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages by the Women Who Were Written Out Of It by Janina Ramirez
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz
Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers by Marta McDowell
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin
Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace by Michelle Slatalla and Matthew Quittner
Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? by Claire Dederer
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy
Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded by Jason Heller
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grizzly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
The Madman's Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History by Edward Brooke-Hitching
The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation by Bill Morgan
EDIT — A few more suggestions, if you want them:
A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution by Toby Green
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale by Amitav Ghosh
Great list - a lot of people will benefit from you sharing that. I'm particularly interested in Jesus and John Wayne and Masters of Deception. You would have quite the variety of knowledge in your brain from all these topics!
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/oled_soundsystem
This is a non-exhaustive list of books I’ve read (and a massive to-read pile). Lots of fiction but some non as well.
Terry Pratchett is popular I see. Thank you for this and your HUGE to read list, I look forward to trawling through
Terry Pratchett Audiobooks got me through this year TBH
Of course! I’ve been meaning to read more Pratchett, but as far as fiction goes, I’m on a serious Murakami kick. I’m hooked on this guy’s style.
Already so many great recommendations in this thread, my most recent (and essential in my eyes) impactful non-fiction read is Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott ; it was written in the late 90s, however, a lot of what it has to say is quite salient with corporations being as large as nation states.
Here's my profile: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/cassian_eh
Another Terry Pratchett reader! I think you take the cake for the largest to read list I've ever seen at more than 2,800 - good for you!
Thank you for sharing your recommendation and profile link, I will be browsing in depth.
Searches: selfhood in the digital age stands out as one I'm very interested in
Haha oh dear 😅, I'm sure a majority of that list came together from simply seeing what others are reading via the weekly thread. This community is both a blessing and a curse lmao, so many books but so little time!