{"id":15361,"date":"2016-08-27T17:14:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T00:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2016\/08\/27\/15361.html"},"modified":"2016-08-27T17:14:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T00:14:10","slug":"nonfiction-thats-stuck-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2016\/08\/27\/nonfiction-thats-stuck-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonfiction that&#8217;s stuck with me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When I saw Amy Sundberg's post listing ten nonfiction books that had stuck with her, my first thought was: Have I actually <em>read<\/em> ten nonfiction books? All the way through?<\/p>\n<p>Turns out I have, but maybe not a whole lot more than that. Had to look at my bookcase for ideas. Eventually came up with a list of ten that I particularly like, but I don't know if I'd be able to expand this to twenty.<\/p>\n<p>Some that I've particularly liked and\/or that have made a big impact on me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n  <li><cite>Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature<\/cite>, by Dorothy Allison.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>The Body Project<\/cite>, by Joan Brumberg.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>Times Square Red, Times Square Blue<\/cite>, by Samuel R. Delany.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>An Almanac of Words at Play<\/cite> and <cite>Another Almanac of Words at Play<\/cite>, edited by Willard Espy.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>84, Charing Cross Road<\/cite>, by Helene Hanff.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>Bird by Bird<\/cite>, by Anne Lamott.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>Stranger Here<\/cite>, by Jen Larsen.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>West with the Night<\/cite>, by Beryl Markham.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>Plagues and Peoples<\/cite>, by William H. McNeill.<\/li>\n  <li><cite>James Tiptree, Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon<\/cite>, by Julie Phillips.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I want to say <cite>G&ouml;del, Escher, Bach<\/cite>, except I never actually read all of the nonfiction parts of that. Also haven't yet read some bits of <cite>The Jewel-Hinged Jaw<\/cite>. I guess I could say Anne Frank's diary. Or <cite>Fun Home<\/cite>, or <cite>Persepolis<\/cite>. Or Jon Carroll's collection of columns <cite>Near Life Experiences<\/cite>. Or Delany's <cite>Heavenly Breakfast<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<p>I do read a fair bit of nonfiction on the web, in bite-sized pieces. But sitting down to read a whole book-sized work of nonfiction feels like real work to me; I tend to shy away from it, unless it's a topic that I'm very interested in <em>and<\/em> I really like the author's writing. Even then, it might take some effort to get me going.<\/p>\n<p>(Written in September 2014 but never posted.)<\/p>\n<p>(See also my post about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2013\/03\/04\/14426.html\">not reading nonfiction<\/a> from 2013.)<\/p>\n<p>(See also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jed.hartman\/posts\/10210400377145682\">Facebook thread<\/a> for this post.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I saw Amy Sundberg&#8217;s post listing ten nonfiction books that had stuck with her, my first thought was: Have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}