10 December 2019

Nonfiction I Want to Try | Top Ten Tuesday

Hosted weekly by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Happy Tuesday!

Today, I'm reading The Five, so I've got nonfiction on the brain. I have found only a couple books of the genre that I truly enjoy (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, American Predator, and Fail Until You Don't recently). I tend to read more that I do not like than that I do, but I keep trying. Here are a few still on my TBR:



Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society by Judy Christie & Lisa Wingate

"The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families."



The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

"Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up."


Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

"The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime New York Times bestseller about one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed."


Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?


Code Name: Lise. The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy by Larry Loftis

"The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father’s footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill."


From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke

"A poignant and transporting cross-cultural love story set against the lush backdrop of the Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hour."


The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan

"For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness-how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people -- sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society -- went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever."


The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators With the FBI's Original Mindhunter by John Douglas & Mark Olshaker

"The legendary FBI criminal profiler, number-one New York Times bestselling author, and inspiration for the hit Netflix show Mindhunter delves deep into the lives and crimes of four of the most disturbing and complex predatory killers, offering never-before-revealed details about his profiling process, and divulging the strategies used to crack some of America’s most challenging cases."


The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation by Rich Cohen

"Was he New York City's last pirate...or its first gangster? This is the true story of the bloodthirsty underworld legend who conquered Manhattan, port by port--for fans of Gangs of New York and Boardwalk Empire."


Little Weirds by Jenny Slate

"Step into Jenny Slate's wild, unfiltered imagination in this 'magical' (Mindy Kaling), 'delicious' (Amy Sedaris), and 'poignant' (John Mulaney) collection about love, heartbreak, and being alive -- 'this book is something new and wonderful' (George Saunders)."


My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams

"Sex and the City meets Catch Me if You Can in the astonishing true story of Anna Delvey, a young con artist posing as a German heiress in New York City—as told by the former Vanity Fair photo editor who got seduced by her friendship and then scammed out of more than $62,000."


Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra

"This is the story of four young boys. Four lifelong friends. Intelligent, fun-loving, wise beyond their years, they are inseparable. Their potential is unlimited, but they are content to live within the closed world of New York City's Hell's Kitchen. And to play as many pranks as they can on the denizens of the street. They never get caught. And they know they never will.

Until one disastrous summer afternoon."



Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions From Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty

In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death? Readers will learn the best soil for mummifying your body, whether you can preserve your best friend’s skull as a keepsake, and what happens when you die on a plane. Beautifully illustrated by DiannĆ© Ruz, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? shows us that death is science and art, and only by asking questions can we begin to embrace it.

Do you read nonfiction? What books do you recommend?

1 comment:

  1. I'm on a super long library waitlist for Before and After. It sounds like a wonderful read.

    My TTT.

    ReplyDelete