I keep meaning to participate in Non-Fiction November and failing miserably (I’ve read six books so far this month and a grand total of one has been non-fiction). That being said, I wanted to recommend a bunch of brilliant non-fiction books I have read over the years in the hopes that maybe you’ll be able to pick some of them up this month, or any time in the future.
Many of these would also make brilliant holiday gifts and if you’re so inclined, please consider buying them through my affiliate links below.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
I decided to organise this list alphabetically by title, but as it happens, the book I chose to represent my favourite non-fiction author of all time happened to sit first on the list. I’d honestly recommend picking up almost anything by Bill Bryson, although I feel that his earlier and middle-era books read funnier than the later ones, however, A Short History of Nearly Everything will always be near and dear to my heart as it was receiving this book for my 18th birthday that reminded me how much I love science and persuaded me that I was indeed smart enough to study it at university. The certificates that hang on my walls today wouldn’t be there without this book.
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
I’ve listened to this twice now and can see myself listening to it many more times in the future. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a hard book to explain other than it is a collection of short essays that look at dozens of things we are familiar with as humans - geese, QWERTY keyboards, velociraptors, Penguins of Madagascar, diet Dr Pepper - and rates them while filling you with a sense of wonder and hope for humanity. It’s a strangely cosy book that can’t help to make you feel good, even when touching on heavier subjects.
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
I initially picked up The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu because of the title (obviously) and found an incredible story of courage within as a bunch of librarians sneak 350,000 precious manuscripts out of Timbuktu and into southern Mali following the city’s 2012 occupation by Al Qaeda. It’s a treatise on the importance of art and literature, and the risks ordinary people will take to save those things when extremism threatens to destroy them forever.
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede
On September 11 2002, 38 planes headed from Europe to the USA were forced to land instead in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, nearly doubling the population in a matter of hours. The Day the World Came to Town is a heartwarming book that tells the story of what happened next in the town, as the “plane people” were welcomed with open arms and life-long friendships were formed in a devastating time. This is an incredibly uplifting book and inspired the musical Come From Away.
Death in Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion: Activist. Arsonist. Suffragette. by Fern Riddell
Some would like to believe that women achieved the right to vote peacefully through protest and politics. Death in Ten Minutes reminds us that this was not the case by exploring the movement through the personal diaries of Kitty Marion, a suffragette who travelled the country carrying out bombing and arson attacks on the orders of the Pankhurst family, but who, along with many other more militant members of the movement, has been hushed up and erased from history. It’s a powerful reminder of the lengths women need to go to to gain and maintain their rights.
The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry & the Discovery of the Prehistorical World by Deborah Cadbury
Another of my favourite non-fiction authors, I picked up The Dinosaur Hunters on a whim years ago and fell in love. The book tells the story of the bitter rivalry between Gideon Mantell (a country doctor from Lewes) and Richard Owen (a world-famous anatomist). The story is so outrageous at times that it feels it belongs more to Hollywood than to the quiet streets of Victorian Sussex, filled as it is with tragedy and obsession. It made me a lifelong supporter of Dr Mantell and rekindled my childhood love of dinosaurs.
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
A very recent read, How to Be Perfect is a hilarious primer on philosophy written by the creator of The Good Place. it begins with obvious moral questions, for example, should I punch my friend in the face for no good reason? Then moves on to more complex and difficult quandaries, all the while exploring different schools of thinking and making us realise that being a good person isn’t as simple as you’d think. Far from being heavy though, this is a laugh-out-loud read that I’m sure anyone would enjoy and it deserves to be sitting high on holiday gift guides this year.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
One of the more well-known entries on this list, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a detailed and beautifully written true crime book that digs deep into the Golden State Killer who terrorized California for over a decade in the 1970s and 80s before vanishing. The book is perhaps more well-known because McNamara died suddenly while writing it, lending the whole thing an even deeper air of tragedy as the killer was finally identified and convicted just two years after her death, over 30 years after his final crime.
In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet (
)In Defence of Witches is a thought-provoking book that looks at the ways that women today are still persecuted, just as our ancestors were. While we’re not being burned at the stake anymore, women are still persecuted every day (just browse any comment section online) and that persecution is most likely to happen to the very same women who were most likely to have been accused of witchcraft in the past: women who are independent, child-free by choice, or who lean into their old age. The book also explores the power women have found in modern-day witchcraft and why it has appealed to so many of us.
Let That Be a Lesson: A Teacher’s Life in the Classroom by Ryan Wilson
This is best described as a love letter to teaching, written by a teacher who dreamt of the profession since childhood, yet also sees it for the impossible job it is today. More memoir than academic tome, Let That Be a Lesson follows Wilson’s career from training at university to his first position as Assistant Head and looks at how ever-changing government demands wear down staff, but also how their lives are brightened every day by students and colleagues. It’s frank, eye-opening and funny as well.
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by
Jenny Lawson has been someone I’ve followed online ever since her infamous Beyonce the Chicken post way back in 2011 that I still cannot read without almost dying due to lack of oxygen from laughing so hard. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is her memoir which is full of short essays with titles like “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”, “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; and “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” I defy you to read it without laughing and wondering how anyone could have so many hilarious things happen to them in the course of their life.
Menopausing by Davina McCall
Another recent read, Menopausing is a vital book for anyone going through, about to go through, or supporting someone through menopause. As menopause is something which around 50% of the population will experience regardless of class, race, or sexual orientation, few people won’t benefit from a browse through its pages which cover the symptoms (physical and mental), treatment options, personal experiences and more. It’s a no-holds-barred book that encourages us to speak out and not feel shame about our bodies as they approach their second spring.
Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson
A mixture of a biography collection and a reader’s guide (expect your TBR to grow substantially while reading), Monster, She Wrote explores the women who gave us countless horror, gothic, sci-fi, and other stories. There are plenty of famous names here like Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, and VC Andrews, but also many lesser-known ones too who deserve to have more people reading their work.
Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday
Otherlands is an incredible and eye-opening book that acts as a sort of literary time machine, taking us on a journey back in time to see how our planet looked at various moments in the past. In each chapter, we are taken to a specific moment in a specific location to watch events unfold: australopithecines flee a python in Kenya during the Pliocene era; a cliff collapses allowing water from the Atlantic Ocean to begin forming the Mediterranean Sea in the Miocene; the first microbial life begins to form in what will one day become Australia hundreds of millions of year ago. The pictures Halliday paints are so vivid, that this is the closest I feel I will ever come to time travel.
Outrageous!: The Story of Section 28 and Britain’s Battle for LGBT Education by Paul Baker
In 1988, the UK passed a law that banned teaching “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. This law, known as Section 28, would remain in place for nearly two decades, effectively banning any mention of LGBTQ people or issues in schools or local authorities, silencing both students and teachers, and helping with the formation of groups like Stonewall. Outrageous! explores how the law came into being, and the fight for its eventual removal. It’s a powerful book and vital reading for today’s younger LGBTQ community.
The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it by Stuart Maconie
In The Nanny State Made Me, Stuart Maconie investigates how the Nanny State - what Americans might term “Big government” - helped raise his generation. The chapters cover things like the NHS, schools, libraries, benefits, and public transport and explore the consequences of privatization combined with years of austerity for the average Brit. It’s not a balanced book, but we’re all in this together and this shows how a country can pull together even more effectively with the help of a caring government that puts its people before profits.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Within the span of just a few days, Raynor Winn lost her home and her livelihood and learned that her husband was terminally ill. With nowhere to go, only pennies to their name, and the sense that the clock was ticking, the couple impulsively decided to walk the South West Coast Path, a distance of 630 miles. The Salt Path is the story of that walk, of the healing power of nature, and of coming to terms with grief. I read it at a difficult time of my life and found it infinitely therapeutic.
The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World by Sarah Stewart Johnson
The Sirens of Mars is a part memoir, part historical narrative of the exploration of one of our nearest planetary neighbours. Written by Sarah Stewart Johnson, an assistant professor of planetary science at Georgetown University, the book covers the history of our obsession with the red planet and also the people who helped us to take greater and greater leaps toward understanding it. The book ends knowing that it is being forced to conclude before the story it wants to tell is finished but looks forward with hope and more of the same excitement that filled the previous 180+ pages.
The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager
This was my favourite book of 2022. The Smallest Lights in the Universe follows the life of Sara Seager, an MIT astrophysicist on the autistic spectrum who has been involved in the search for exoplanets (planets that orbit stars other than the sun) for many decades. However, Seager’s career is only half the story. We also follow her family life, shaped by losing her husband to an aggressive form of cancer, leaving Seager a young widowed mother at forty and floundering. This is a difficult book at times, but a wonderful one.
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
This was easily one of the most terrifying books I have ever read. It’s a no-holds-barred look at the realities of climate change. What is likely to happen to our planet, why, and what we need to do to try and slow it down because we’re already far beyond stopping it entirely. I struggled to read The Uninhabitable Earth and had to stop reading at all before bed due to nightmares. However, I would still recommend you pick it up because only by opening our eyes to reality do we stand a chance at changing the future.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by
I wanted to end this list on a positive, and Wintering is just that book. This is a book that “invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times”, understanding that hard times are part of a natural cycle we all experience and that by embracing those darker “winters” of our existence, we can find acceptance and joy in them. I’m going through my own winter this year. I read this book right at the beginning of that time as I felt the darkness drawing in and it’s something I feel has helped me tackle the previous months in a more positive way than I might otherwise have done.