Tag: Roxane Gay

Nonfiction November: A Look Back at My Year in Nonfiction

This coming month, starting early today, I’m participating in Nonfiction November (for more information on the event and hosts, click on the image at right). Week 1: (Oct. 28 to Nov. 1) – Your Year in Nonfiction : Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

I will be honest that I wasn’t sure I was going to participate in this, but earlier this month, I did see former host Kim of the blog Sophisticated Dorkiness mention the event on her Instagram feed and it got me thinking about it. Then a few other bloggers I follow mentioned it too, and now I’m feeling the blogger pressure. PLUS more importantly, I want to participate because this year I’ve read more nonfiction than in other years. I’m also hoping to read at least one nonfiction book a week in November, although I’ll be happy if I read only a few.

Altogether this year, out of the 28 books I’ve read total, 11 of them are nonfiction or 39 percent. Here are the 11, in order of when I read them:

  1. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
  2. Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields by Julia Kasdorf and Steven Rubin
  3. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
  4. All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot
  5. Calypso by David Sedaris
  6. Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Taylor Brown
  7. All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot
  8. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
  9. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
  10. Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
  11. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

The Library Book was my first read of the year and was a great way to begin the year. I’ve been reading the Herriot series over the last couple of years and have the next two, The Lord God Made Them All and Every Living Thing, to read in the next couple of months, maybe into next year. Travels with Charley was a reread. Almost all were excellent, with four in particular standing out among the rest: The Library Book, Born a Crime, Hunger, and Born to Run. The best, by a slight margin, was Born to Run, perhaps because I had been gifted the book as part of a book blogger gift exchange a couple of years ago and never gotten to read it.

As you can tell, I don’t have one single topic to which I’m attracted. However, among my “to-be-reads” are more than a dozen books on race in America. I have collected them, mostly from Kindle deals, over the last year, year and a half. I have yet to get to them, because I’ll be honest (again) that I’m having a hard time reading political nonfiction right now with our current political climate. Unfortunately, like many Americans, it makes me frustrated to the point of disengagement. I know I will get to these books, but I think it’s going to be slowly, rather than all at once, in one large binge-read.

I’m also reading one nonfiction book right now: Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M.M. Blume. I started it during this past Saturday’s Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon during which I also re-read The Sun Also Rises. I’m not sure what else I’ll be reading for nonfiction during November with my next several planned books being fiction, but that always could change, depending on my mood.

Whether or not you’re participating or not in Nonfiction November, I’ll leave you with the same questions as this first week of the event: What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?

Pushing Forward Back August/September 2019

August was full of mostly medical appointments for me, 10 in all, among them, doctor appointments, physical therapy sessions, and a community multidiagnostic blood analysis. But I was able to…

Read

  • The Dark Vineyard, the second Bruno, Chief of Police mystery, by Martin Walker
  • Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
  • Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
  • The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

The first three were with the help of Dewey’s 24 Hour Reverse Readathon on the first weekend of the month. The best of the four, far and away, was Gay’s memoir, although I enjoyed a reread of Travels with Charley and a first read of The Death of Mrs. Westaway.

Watch

  • The Orville: I decided to give it a try and was so pleasantly surprised by it that I convinced my wife to start watching it with me.
  • What We Do In The Shadows (the TV show): We binge-watched the first season last week and loved every minute of it. If you haven’t seen the movie on which it is based, see it first. If you like that, you’ll love this.
  • This Way Up: A short British show, from Irish comedian and writer Aisling Bea, about a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown.

We watched all three on Hulu, with our favorite far and away What We Do in the Shadows. We still have to get back to more of The Orville.

Oh, yeah, we also watched Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, The Director’s Cut, on August 15, the 5oth anniversary of the start of Woodstock. We were going to go to a local venue where they were going to show it, but then opted to just watch it at home, via streaming, on Google Play Movies. It was great.

Listen To

  • the new album i, i by Bon Iver, which “dropped” early on Aug. 9 instead of being released on Aug. 30 as initially scheduled.
  • the first album from Raphael Saadiq in eight years, Jimmy Lee, named for a brother who overdosed in the 1990s. I first discovered Saadiq as a member of Tony! Toni! Toné! and then his last album, Stone Rollin’, and am glad I’m rediscovering him.
  • the new album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, by Lana Del Rey, which dropped yesterday.

I’m still deciding which I like best, but because I’ve listened to it so much already, it’s probably i, i.

We were supposed to go on a day trip to Three Brothers Winery on Seneca Lake, but that didn’t work out for August. But we were able to visit with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and niece one Saturday for a picnic before they went to a Southern Gospel concert. And on my own, I had a day in a nearby town, where I had a cheesesteak from a local food truck and got several pairs of shorts and some shirts at Goodwill, with all of the clothes for under $20.

September should be less medical appointments for me as I am done with physical therapy. However, I still have at least two. I have a six-week follow up for my left knee after getting three gel injections at the end of July and start of August. I also have a colonoscopy as I just turned 50 in June…and a test for my prostate.

I am starting the month off with a four-day holiday weekend as the library is closed Monday and I took off Tuesday as a vacation day during which we are going to take that day trip to Three Brothers Wineries on Seneca Lake that we didn’t in August.

The week before I went on my 50th birthday wine trip in June, Three Brothers sent me a private message on Instagram that they’d send me a free gift since I had tagged them in a post that the winery was one of the wineries we were going to go to. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the message until that weekend, but they mailed me the following week a gift of two free flights for each of their three wineries. If we don’t go this weekend, I have a feeling we won’t go this year so we’re doing it.

As for the rest of my plans for not only this weekend, but this month, here is what I want to…

Read

  • Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen, which I started last weekend after committing to getting real during my #fakereadathons and will be continuing this weekend.
  • Becoming by Michelle Obama
  • We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
  • The Lord God Made Them All by James Herriot.

I think I’ll keep it to that short list, although I might get to more, but we’ll see.

Watch

  • The Middle, which I just discovered via IMDb TV on Amazon Prime and my wife and I are enjoying watching even with the commercials.
  • Good Omens, which we still have yet to watch. We both loved the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
  • Mindhunter, Season 2: Even though my wife doesn’t like shows like Criminal Minds, she did like this one in its first season and so did I, so hopefully we’ll get to this this month.

Listen To

I’m not really sure yet, beyond delving into Lana Del Rey’s new album, from which I’ll leave you with this track:

How was your month of August? Read any good books, seen any good movies and/or TV shows, listened to any good music? What was the highlight of your month? What are you most looking forward to in September? Share in the comments.