Nonfiction November 2023: My Year in Nonfiction

I don’t know about you, but Nonfiction November definitely snuck up on me this year. Fortunately, Rebekah’s recent kick-off post on her blog She Seeks Nonfiction confirmed my suspicions it was around the corner and helped put me in the needed mindset. With a modest atmospheric river dumping rain in my area I might as well stay inside my cabin and crank out a post for Nonfiction November 2023.

This year our host for Week 1 is Heather of Based on a True Story.  Following in the footsteps of previous hosts she gets the ball rolling by asking us a few little questions.

Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read? What were your favorites? Have you had a favorite topic? Is there a topic you want to read about more? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

My Favorites (so far) of 2023

• The Good Assassin: How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia by Stephan Talty (2020)
• Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land by Jacob Mikanowski (2023)
• A Man and His Ship: America’s Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States by Steven Ujifusa (2012)
• In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (2015)
• Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World without World War I by Richard Ned Lebow (2014)
• How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter (2022)
• Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder (2015)
• I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne (2006)
• Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz (2016)
• On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War by Bernard Wasserstein (2012)

Reviewing the nonfiction I’ve read this year I noticed a few things. So far in 2023 I’ve read a diverse array of memoirs including those by Iranians, individuals who’ve left high-control religious communities and Holocaust survivors. Other areas of interest were politics, mid 20th century European history and on the ground reporting.

Iranian Memoirs

• We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran by Aria Minu-Sepehr (2012)
• Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi (2008)
• My Name Is Iran by Davar Ardalan (2007)

Leaving High-Control Religious Communities Memoirs

• Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life by Amber Scorah (2019)
• Lost Boy by Brent W. Jeffs with Maia Szalavitz (2009)
• The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Josh Hanagarne (2013) – Please note: Hanagarne’s memoir mainly focusses upon his lifelong struggle with Tourette Syndrome. In the end he does leave the LDS (Mormon) church but his departure is amicable and holds the institution and its members in high esteem.

Holocaust Survivor Memoirs 

• Stolen Years by Sara Zyskind (1977)
• Thanks to My Mother by Schoschana Rabinovici (1998)

Politics

• What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank (2004)
• How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter (2022)
• The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age by James Kirchick (2017)

Mid 20th Century European History

• Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder (2015)
• I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne (2006)
• The Good Assassin: How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia by Stephan Talty (2020)
• On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War by Bernard Wasserstein (2012)

On the Ground Reporting

• Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz (2016)
• Falling off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization by Alex Perry (2008)
• Jungleland: A Mysterious Lost City, a WWII Spy, and a True Story of Deadly Adventure by Christopher S. Stewart (2013)
• Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World by Robert D. Kaplan (2017)

To hopefully answer Heather’s last two questions for the rest of the year and well beyond I’m planning on reading even more books about 20th century European history, Iran and people exiting oppressive religious communities. As for what I’d like to get out of this year’s Nonfiction November my goals remains the same year after year. I wanna come away with great book recommendations, discover new book blogs, and maybe even pick up an additional subscriber or two.