Favorite Books/Favorite Authors [Non-Fiction version]

[octoprof]

Let's talk about our favorite (non-fiction) books and authors.

Suggest a book or an author or a series or whatever is on your favorites list that others might enjoy.



I really enjoyed Becoming by Michelle Obama. Not only does it provide some insight into the Obama White House, but it gives a deep look inside Michelle's childhood and maturing experience. It's clearly not easy to be a very bright and accomplished woman who steps back while her husband shines on the world stage. She is pretty awesome.

Another totally different book that I enjoyed and found very enlightening is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. it provides a window into a world of discrimination and worse, a deep feel for a particular period of history, and also some shocking details about early cancer research. It's a must read.

[ergative]

I've been interested in Henrietta Lacks for years now. I'll have to scootch it higher up my to-read list.

Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez. It's a repository for all the facts you might want to draw on when arguing that, no, really, society is still hella sexist. Everything from hammer design, to snow plowing routes, to medical research, to crash test dummies, to public transportion, is designed with men in mind, and does not serve women as well as it could.

[octoprof]

Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez. It's a repository for all the facts you might want to draw on when arguing that, no, really, society is still hella sexist. Everything from hammer design, to snow plowing routes, to medical research, to crash test dummies, to public transportion, is designed with men in mind, and does not serve women as well as it could.

Oh, I'm going to get that today for sure. Thanks.

[AmLitHist]

I'm catching up on my list this summer, and last week I finished A. Scott Berg's Wilson, a big fat biography of the 28th President.  Like all his books, it's well researched and well written; I find Berg's writing style very engaging.  His Lindbergh and Kate [Hepburn] Remembered are both very good, as well.

Currently I'm just into Jane Ridley's The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince and really enjoying it.  Talk about your research:  she had access to Bertie's (and others') papers in the House of Windsor.  Jealous!  I especially like it because it's far more realistic than the PBS Victoria, which I do enjoy but which takes (a LOT of) dramatic license and paints the Queen as being far nicer and smarter than she probably was.

[Juvenal]

The various volumes of editions of the several edited/printed journals of James Boswell, currently reading Boswell In Extremes 1776-1778, and have just ordered through ABE Books (wonderful resource; any book out of print seems to be available), Boswell: The Ominous Years: 1774-1776..  A diarist who tells all*: whoring and drinking, barging in on Voltaire and Rousseau, bracing David Hume on his deathbed about religious belief [got no satisfaction!], and palling around with Samuel Johnson--what more could you want?

*Except for the pages torn out of the originals by pudic descendants, making one wonder just what there was beyond what was preserved.

[nebo113]

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.  I generally avoid memoirs, but this on is excellent.  Isolate, physically abused by a brother, bi-polar father, doormat mother......yet she succeeded and doesn't whine as she describes her upbringing.

[nebo113]

I'm also trying to read The Diary of Mary Chestnut  but it's challenging when she expresses more disgust about a "literary lady" who maligned South Carolina that she does seeing an enslaved woman on the auction block.