I’m a little late to this week’s prompt for Nonfiction November, which is hosted by Katie at Doing Dewey Decimal.

It’s a chance to look back on the nonfiction I’ve read over the past year and also a chance to be confronted with the fact that I really don’t read a lot of nonfiction!

Out of almost 120 books, I’ve only read 17 nonfiction books since 1st November 2021. that’s just over a tenth of my overall reading, which is not a good tally at all.

Here are the books I’ve read with links to either my review or the book description on Goodreads:

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy

Crapalachia by Scott McClenahan

Hiroshima by John Hersey

The Witches: Salem, 1962 by Stacy Schiff

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

Poetry, Memory and the Party by Thomas McCarthy

The Stasi Poetry Circle by Philip Oltermann

The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom

Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson

The Missing by Andrew O’Hagan

I Live a Life Like Your by Jan Grue

It’s Not Yet Dark by Simon Fitzmaurice

Party Monster by James St James

The Devil in White City by Erik Larsen

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Jan Morris: Life from Both Sides by Paul Clements

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Most of my nonfiction reading is True Crime, with five of my books coming from that genre. Five were autobiography and two were memoirs from writers living with disabilities. Surprisingly, two books centred on poetry and two were about historical tragedies.

Of all of these books, my favourite was The Five by Hallie Rubenhold, closely followed by Simon Fitzmaurice’s very affecting memoir about living with Motor Neurone Disease. I also very much enjoyed The Devil in White City which was a fantastic blend of historical writing and true crime set during the World Fair in Chicago in 1893.

It’s very clear that I when it comes to choosing what to read, my preference is fiction, so over the coming year, I’ll try and seek some more nonfiction from the 746 and see if I can at least read 20 titles! I’ll be following everyone’s Nonfiction November’s posts with interest to get some inspiration for the coming year.

How has your year in nonfiction been? I’ll be taking a break from posting tomorrow as it is my birthday, but will be back on Tuesday for Novellas in November, when we will be celebrating Novellas in Translation.

nonfiction #nonficnov nonfiction nonfiction november