Sometimes it feels like I never get to read anything new

[conuly]

This is factually untrue - I just finished a new book yesterday - but it does feel that way.

Recommend something to me! Especially nonfiction - I really don't read much of that, so I can promise that I'll never have read whatever you recommend! (Whereas if you recommend anything kidlit or YA there's better than even odds that I've read it.)

Later I'll post up my own list of random recommendations for everybody, but right now I really must dash.

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

Most of my favorite nonfiction probably requires being interested in the subject, and I don't know about your specific interests, but here are some good nonfiction books of general interest:

Swimming to Antarctica, by Lynne Cox. Memoir of the author's experiences distance swimming, mostly in super cold water, such as the Bering Strait, and the sea off the coast of Antarctica. She did the obligatory English Channel crossing and held the world record at the age of 15, but her adventures got a lot more unique after that.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing. Very tightly written and gripping account of Shackleton's Antarctic expedition that got trapped in the ice and drifted for a couple of years. No fanfare, just every single sentence is about incredibly difficult circumstances and the heroic efforts necessary to overcome them.

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric Cline. History of the end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean.

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, by Cordelia Fine. A meta-analysis of the research that purports to find significant differences between the male and female brains that lead to differences in behavior, and explodes claim after claim using actual good methodology.

T-Rex and the Crater of Doom, by Walter Alvarez. A history of how the author and some fellow scientists figured out that a giant meteor strike coincided with the end of the dinosaurs.

I saw The Body Keeps the Score recommended upthread. If you're into that sort of thing, I liked Bruce Perry's The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog much better. Warning: lots of child harm.

Somewhat more technical:

Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Explained, by Marie and Elgen Long. A totally fact-based, no-conspiracy-theory (no castaways, no spies, no Japanese prison camps, no turning up later under assumed names) reconstruction of the technical and product management failures that caused Amelia Earhart's plane crash into the ocean.

The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins. Evolutionary biology, and how a lot of specific animals got their features.

The Bronte Myth, by Lucasta Miller. A meta-study of the critical reception, biographical studies, and mythologizing of the Bronte sisters. Totally readable and interesting even if you haven't read or didn't like their works (which I mostly haven't and didn't enjoy the ones I did read, long ago). Emphasis on good methodology. Goes well with the fictional Dark Quartet, by Lynne Reid Banks (whom you may recognize as the author of the Indian in the Cupboard series), which is one of my all-time favorite books.

Let me know if you try any of these!

[conuly]

Oooh, thanks. I'm lately interested in the Late Bronze Age collapse, so a proper book to read will be nice.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, good! That was an award-winning popular history. If you're interested in more scholarly sources, I can recommend quite a few on Aegean Bronze Age archaeology broadly, which will include material on the collapse. This is what I mean by most of the stuff I read being pretty technical and only interesting if you care deeply about the subject. Aegean Bronze Age archaeology is one of the subjects of my heart, though I don't practice it.

ETA: Haha, omg, I just realized I have *65* entries from the period a few years ago when I was aggressively reading up on the subject, under my Aegean Bronze Age tag, of which about 10 seem to be public, long, and dryyy. The other 55 are private, long, and dryyy, mostly me taking notes on what I was reading.