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Tag: nonfiction November

Kicking Off Nonfiction November

What’s got two thumbs and is doing a blog event? I am so on top of this blog event that I’m posting about it before the month of November even begins. It’s Nonfiction November, and you can find the full announcement and schedule here! We’re starting with Your Year in Nonfiction, and I have had a year in nonfiction! Some things have changed! Things have changed about my nonfiction reading habits! If you want to participate in Nonfiction November (which you surely do), you can pop over to check out other people’s posts and link up your own at Julz…

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Review: American Prison, Shane Bauer

At last, cry the punters! At last Jenny will write a blog post without reference to These Troubled Times! The reporting for American Prison took place in 2014, a very long time ago, practically before human memory began, and thus can tell us nothing about These Troubled Times. Ah, yes, but unfortunately, though Shane Bauer’s initial reporting for Mother Jones led the Obama administration to end all federal contracts with private prisons, the Trump administration under Jeff Sessions reversed that decision. Also, American prison labor is slavery, so in this regard, These Times have always been Troubled. Happy Monday! tw:…

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Nonfiction November: New to My TBR

Well, Americans, how were your Thanksgivings? I hope you sternly noped any racisms you encountered from your relatives and ate plenty of delicious turkey. We are reaching the end of a wonderful Nonfiction November, hosted this week by the fab Lory from the Emerald City Book Review. It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book! I may as well confess now that I have not been as riotously active a participant in Nonfiction November as I intended.…

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Nonfiction November: Book Pairing

Nonfiction November continues, hosted this week by Sarah at Sarah’s Book Shelves. This week we’re talking book pairings! This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story. Mm, yes, I love a good game of Read This Then That. Nonfiction November has pegged me accurately in this regard. Let’s start with a creepy debut novel…

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Review: Committed, Dinah Miller and Annette Hanson

Note: I received a copy of Committed from the publisher for review consideration. I maintain a master list of Claims that Require Heightened Scrutiny, and the number one item on my list — indeed the reason I started to maintain the list — is this: Any claim that a complicated problem has a simple solution. Nothing infuriates me more1 than people insisting that a complicated thing is actually very simple if people would just look at it in a new way. No! Systems are complicated! Even when there is a simple solution (e.g., we have a vaccine that prevents polio),…

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Nonfiction November: Choosing Nonfiction

Well, the weather is still confusingly warm, but nevertheless my calendar informs me that we are now in the month of November, which can only mean one thing, book lovers: The triumphal return of Nonfiction November! This week is hosted by Rachel of Hibernator’s Library, and we’re talking about book selection techniques. To wit: What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If…

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LAUREN REDNISS ALWAYS: A post for Nonfiction November

This week for Nonfiction November, we’re talking about nonfiction that comes in different and exciting forms, not just your standard academic monograph or zippy book from Norton about Satanists or whatever. Pop by Rebecca’s blog to see what everyone else has to say about this! Nontraditional Nonfiction: This week we will be focusing on the nontraditional side of reading nonfiction. Nonfiction comes in many forms. There are the traditional hardcover or paperback print books, of course, but then you also have e-books, audiobooks, illustrated and graphic nonfiction, oversized folios, miniatures, internet publishing, and enhanced books complete with artifacts. So many…

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Nonfiction November: Book Pairing!

Every November, four wonderful bloggers (Kim and Leslie and Katie and Rebecca) team up to bring us the marvelous Nonfiction November. The theme of this week is book pairings, in which we pair our fiction reads with a nonfictional counterpart. Earlier in the year, I had the inestimable privilege of participating in Alice (of Reading Rambo)’s readalong of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s book The Monk. It was…deeply stupid. HOWEVER. As I was scouring my reading spreadsheets for nonfiction books to highlight in this book pairing, I remembered that I read a book earlier this year in which every insane thing done…

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Not a dumb American: American edition

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is a read for Nonfiction November, hosted by the marvelous Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Leslie (Regular Rumination), Katie (Doing Dewey), and Rebecca (I’m Lost in Books). Rebecca’s the host for this week, so head on over to her blog to see the nonfiction other bloggers have been reading and recommending! My American history memory is in a parlous state, mostly because I have never been terribly interested in it. But I am VERY VERY interested in colonial powers and the ways they do colonialism, so I was eager to pick up Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz’s…

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Not a dumb American: Truth commissions edition

Unspeakable Truths is a read for Nonfiction November, hosted by the marvelous Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Leslie (Regular Rumination), Katie (Doing Dewey), and Rebecca (I’m Lost in Books). Kim’s the host for this week, so head on over to her blog to see the nonfiction other bloggers have been reading and recommending! Some time ago I got the idea in my head that I wanted to learn more about a fuzzy thing I could not quite define that was related to shifting from a terrible, warry society to a less-terrible not-war society. As with so many things, it was tricky to…

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