Hey guys!

So lately I've realized that I only read fiction books. In my defense, I read a lot of them- like 50 or so a year (including re-reads of books I've already read). Yet, I've never read a nonfiction book that's not a textbook. However, nonfiction is something I'm going to make a point to read this summer. The goal is to read at least 10 different non-fiction books on a variety of topics before school starts up in September.

So, put your favorite nonfiction book, or topic or author. Not just that though- put why you liked it, and why you read nonfiction in general. I'm trying to start up reading nonfiction because I like being knowledgeable. I simply like knowing things, and I feel like I've learned almost all the real world facts I can from fiction. And textbooks/tv shows only skim the surface.

Also, when I was reading my history textbook near the end, it started talking about 9/11. Have you read stuff that writes about events you remember? Was it incredibly weird for you too? I dunno- I'm so used to reading fiction that has no relation to my daily life (since I've never read even a modern-day fiction that takes place in Southern California suburbia), and textbooks that detail stuff that happened hundreds of years ago. But reading someone talk all impartially and historically about something I remember was probably one of the weirdest events of my life.

TLDR; What are some books/authors/topics of nonfiction that are your favorite? Why do you like reading nonfiction? Have you ever read a nonfiction book that talks all historically about an event you remember? Was this experience super weird?

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?

For school we had to read A history of the America's by Howard Zinn and I enjoyed it since history and science/medical topics are my favorite in nonfiction. The tipping point is interesting as well.

prozac nation and girl, interrupted
they have similar subject matter and were both adapted to amazing movies(girl, interrupted movie is a must watch! its one of my favourites)

One of the best non-fiction books I've read was The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. It's a full account of how the atomic bomb came to be developed, and deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize. The book is amazingly comprehensive, and does a great job of capturing the stories of all the many different people involved.

I tend to particularly like popular science and history books when it comes to non-fiction, and this book has the benefit of covering both those fields.

I agree with caozhi. Some psychology/medical books are interesting. I began reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (same author as The Tipping Point), and I got hooked within the first few pages.

My friends have also been telling me to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat for the longest time. I know that Oliver Sacks' other book Awakenings was turned into a movie (which I watched back in high school). I liked that a lot.

On the other side of the spectrum... I read Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. All I can say is... Wow... and that's just the first installment of her autobiographic series. Some parts may be tough to read:

She got raped at a young age... but overall, I liked it a lot.

Wild Swans was a non-fiction book I really enjoyed. I don't read a lot of non-fiction either, unfortunately. This one's about a woman's chinese ancestry, beginning with her grandmother, then her mother, and then her own autobiography. It tells a lot about the culture of China, along with the major historic events. I think it was banned in China for a while because it's anti-Mao, hahaha.

I remember reading one about Queen Elizabeth I, and it was amazingly good... I can't remember the title off of my head, though. If it comes back to me I'll edit this.

I also second "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", not that I've read it but it's been recommended to me many times and I haven't gotten around to it, but it's probably worth a shot.

Go to work, send your kids to school;
Follow fashion, act normal;
Walk on the pavement, watch T.V.;
Save for retirement, obey the law.
Repeat after me: I am free.

Richard Feynman, in particular two of his books; Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?.
The man was very intelligent and funny. The books mostly deal with what he was up to around the time of the Manhattan Project, and help to inspire a kind of curious intellectual mindset.

Christopher Hitchens also wrote good things, and I am not only talking of his books primarily about religion, but also on the topic of debate itself, and commentary on a wide variety of things. Such as his Selected Essays and Letters to a Young Contrarian

That's weird, I also realized I read almost only fiction and decided I sould read more non-fiction books 🙂
The whole fiction-non fiction division can be tricky sometimes, because there are some books which seem to be non-fiction, but are almost completely made up by the author, like biographies of Shakespeare (there's very little we know about his life, so any book about it is almost pure fiction).

I like reading books about science, I recently started reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson and I really like it so far. I used to like books by Stephen Hawking, but now I started to dislike them, for some reason.
Books by G. K. Chesterton are also very interesting and well-written (and available in Project Gutenberg for free!), but only if you agree with his views, otherwise they may be quite annoying. I like them, but I understand people who don't.
I'm planning to read Awakenings by Oliver Sacks, I've read fragments of it and it seems very interesting. There's also a movie based on it.
And there's a very good historical novel - I, Claudius by Robert Graves. It's a fictional autobiography of the Roman emperor Claudius, so I'm not sure if it can be called non-fiction, but it's definitely worth reading...
I also liked The Study of Language by George Yule, although it's my Linguistics textbook 🙂 I'm very interested in language, how it works etc, and this book answered many of my questions. It's also written in a funny, interesting way.