Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Non-Fiction Books That I've Recently Added To My TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week, we're looking at books in a particular genre we've recently added to our TBR. Since I read fairly widely across genres, the best one I could think of to highlight is non-fiction, which I love. 




Prince Charles: The first of many "British royalty" titles in my list. I've actually gotten more and more interested in Charles, who will have to be one of the oldest guys ever to inherit the throne when he does, right? He's spent his whole life in waiting to be king.

Hitler Ascent: WWII, on the other hand, is not one of my preferred reading topics. It's just never especially drawn me in. But in an age of creeping authoritarianism, the life of one of the most ruthless dictators to ever come to power is something I find myself wanting to explore.

The King Who Had To Go: I wrote about this one last week because it's both a recent addition and coming out later this year! It's about the British abdication crisis in the early 20th century.

Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud: Ann Helen Peterson's work for Buzzfeed is amazing (as is her TinyLetter), so I can't wait to read her book about being a woman.

The Hospital Always Wins: This is a memoir from a man who developed mental illness and was committed to a mental institution, and then tried to get out. The way civil commitment works (and just as often, doesn't work) is totally fascinating as an intersection of law and psychology.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes: As a native Michigander, I love the Great Lakes with my whole heart. It's 1/5th of the fresh water in the entire world, so we should ALL love the Great Lakes. They're a delicate and vital ecosystem and need to be protected.

A Magnificent Obsession: More British royalty! This about the love affair between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and how she and the country were impacted by his death.

Word By Word: I'm an avowed word nerd...I love language, and dictionaries are fascinating. We treat them as gatekeepers and guardians of purity, but they're not really meant to be that at all. They're meant to be reflections of language as it is used, so this look inside how a dictionary functions looks amazing.

Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: Analyzing data is a powerful tool, but I think sometimes gets treated too much like it's infallible. Data can be and often is manipulated to support predetermined conclusions (pay attention to the research methods portion of any study you read!). That being said, it can do some neat tricks, so this analytics take on literature sounds super interesting.

White Trash: Back into the Serious category, America prides itself on being a country of easy social movement (as opposed to the hereditary aristocracy of the Old World). But social class has a great deal of power and resonance here as well, even if we'd rather it didn't, and this book looks at how it's played out since the US started to exist.

6 comments:

  1. Great list! The Hospital Always Wins sounds really interesting. I think Charles probably will be one of our oldest monarchs when he becomes king, but there are a lot of people who think the throne might pass immediately on to William and Kate instead.

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    1. I've heard that rumor too, and I'm not sure how much I believe it. I don't get the sense that Charles doesn't want to be King, but I guess we'll see when we see!

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    1. I only own one (Too Fat/Slutty/Loud), and I've preordered the Hitler book for when it's released in paperback because it's literally a thousand pages long and a hardcover would be so heavy, but none of the rest are ones I own

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  3. Great list! So many of these seem really interesting, so I'm adding them to my to-read list as well. Especially Hitler: Ascent. I know quite a bit about his ascent already, but there is always more to learn. And I feel like it's especially important to know this today. Ooooh, and A Magnificent Obsession was written by Helen Rappaport? I've read her Sisters Romanov book and really enjoyed it, so that's definitely going on my TBR.

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    1. I've never been super into Hitler/WW2, but this one caught my eye and in an age where we're seeing a growing authoritarian trend, I want to be well-versed in the relevant history. I have the Sisters Romanov on my shelf but haven't gotten to it yet, so I'm glad to hear it's one to look forward to!

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