2023 Is Officially the Year of Non-Fiction
I would like to officially declare 2023 as the year of non-fiction. Yes, the rumors are true! Non-fiction is my favorite genre! What can I say, it makes me feel like a Smart Person and like I am Learning Things. In 2022 alone, I read almost 40 non-fiction books, so I feel like I am a pretty good authority on how to pick ‘em.
Now, if you are strictly a fiction girlie and get scared whenever you hear ‘non-fiction’ and think of a dense, boring, academic school text book, have no fear. I have combed through my list and compiled the top 5 recommendations that are intriguing and interesting but still fun and easy to read.
I mean, come on. The title? The cover? Admit it, you already want to read and I haven't even tried to convince you yet.
Radke details the cultural history of our perception of butts. Starting with a physiological perspective of why we even have a butt made up of a muscle with a layer of fat on top (spoiler: it’s for running), then tracing the beginning of our modern-day aesthetic obsession with butts (spoiler: like everything ever, its racist).
From women in the 1800’s wearing bustles under their dresses to achieve a large-butted silhouette, to the waif-like, heroine-chic thin model aesthetics of the 90’s, society’s shifting preferences around our backsides have been broad.
It was incredibly interesting and I loved how the topic of butts seems quite specific, yet it covered a wide range of genres such as evolution, sports physiology, fashion, race relations, and music.
One of my most recently read non-fiction books, for a more detailed description check out my March monthly wrap up!
Much like butts, swearing is a ~scandalous~, eye catching topic. It’s all in the name of LITERATURE, people! This is for EDUCATIONAL purposes only! (Ok fine, it's also for entertainment).
But seriously, this book was delightfully engaging as well as informative. It not only covers the linguistic etymology of swear words, but also the cultural shifts in the usage of obscenities.
You don’t need to know anything about ancient Greeks, Old Christianity, or the Middle Ages to be completely engrossed. This is one of my highest non-fiction recommendations, as I think a wide variety of readers would find it enjoyable.
Freud would have a field day with me– I regularly have long, detailed dreams I can remember the next morning (last night I dreamed I was BFF’s with Kylie Jenner and she had a baby named Viola).
The concept of dreams, and sleep in general, has always been fascinating to me. Walker, a scientific expert on the subject, gives compelling evidence of, well, Why We Sleep.
Don’t let this scare you away, but I read it with almost a tone of warning. Walker’s scientific conclusion? If you don’t get the recommended 8 hours of REM sleep every single night, you are donezo, I hate to break it to you but it's the truth. Which isn’t exactly revelatory. Sleep? Important? Who woulda thunk?! And yet, most of us don’t follow these recommendations even though we know we should.
This book was wonderfully fascinating and got me thinking about my habits to make changes for the better. If you want to be equally informed and inspired, give it a read.
If non-fiction is my favorite genre, then human evolution is my favorite topic. What do you mean humans evolved from fish 300 million years ago?? You’re telling me there used to be multiple species of humans? Fossils? Millions of years old???
Insane and wild and I can’t get enough of it.
This book offered a human evolutionary perspective around a very specific topic: breathing. More specifically, how we are breathing wrong.
Drawing on areas such as pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and physiology, Breath reveals how slight changes in the way we breath has huge implications for all of our bodily functions. From our athletic performance ability, to snoring, asthma, even efficiency of internal organs and autoimmune diseases.
Riveting and complex, yet somehow still completely accessible, I was eating it UP. Big recommend.
My idea of an ‘expensive meal’ is $17 curry chicken at my local Indian restaurant. My ‘good pair of jeans’ costs $40 from Gap and I attended a regular old, public high school.
The other-worldly, untouchable fantasy land of $10,000 sweaters and $400,000 cars is fascinatingly incomprehensible to me.
We live in a society that lusts for wealth and power, and blindly believes in upward social mobility despite the fact forty percent of Americans have absolutely no wealth to speak of. Mechanic delves into the realm of the uber rich to showcase how their wealth negatively impacts our psychological and societal collective.
Now, I’ll be at the front of the line in the class war chanting to “eat the rich”, however, Mechanic boldly dares to consider the humanity of those who inhibit the other side and argues that they, too, are victims of the system, suffering their own pits and downfalls.
It was incredibly revealing and I loved it. If you’re interested in social inequality, and political and economic issues, don’t miss this book!
As I was writing these reviews, I kept thinking “Wow! This was one of my favorite books, definitely at the top of my recommendation list!.... Ok THIS one was my favorite too! …And this one!”
Moral of the story: I loved all these books and you can’t go wrong with any of them. If you pick any of them up, let me know what you think!
