Recently I decided to participate in bloggers reading challenge; actually I joined two. I wanted to read more books in translation so I joined the German Literature Month but that is not what I want to talk about here. The other group activity I joined in on was Nonfiction November and I did this because this year I wanted to make more of an effort with reading non-fiction books. There was a theme post as part of this challenge where they asked everyone to answer four questions about our year of reading non-fiction. These questions where:
- What was your favourite non-fiction read of the year?
- What non-fiction book have you recommended the most?
- What is one topic or type of non-fiction you haven’t read enough of yet?
- What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?
I thought rather than just answering the questions, this would be a good opportunity to practise writing another personal essay. If you are unsure what I’m talking about, check out my October wrap up post. So here I am back with another What I Think About When I’m Not Blogging post and of course that means another essay where I talk about books.
I owe a lot to non-fiction; it was a book about music and the Romantic Period that saved my life and turned me into a reader. In 2009 something clicked within me and I went from a man with no passion to a bibliophile and it was thanks to Craig Schuftan’s book Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone!: The Romantic Movement, Rock and Roll, and the End of Civilisation as We Know It. I listen to a lot of music and that book come out at the right time; suddenly I want from a loser to someone that wanted to learn everything they could.
Yet I still wasn’t reading much non-fiction, I was reading everything I could get my hand on in fiction but that was it. I knew I had to make more of an effort so I set myself a personal challenge in 2013 when I realised I was avoiding non-fiction. I could never understand my aversion towards non-fiction; I often considered myself autodidactic (which I guess I can no longer call myself since I am at uni) yet I kept avoiding it. I try to be a literary explorer and you can tell that by my blog name, and while I do struggle with some genres, I had no justification for avoiding non-fiction.
So I pushed myself to read more and in 2013 I set myself the challenge of reading 20 non-fiction books. My first book for the year was Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and I thought this would cure me. A book about books was the perfect medicine but I did not reach my goal of 20 books. I did read some wonderful books including You Are Not So Smart, Perv and Practical Classics but in the end I only achieved fourteen books. This is not a bad effort but I was not content with this and set myself the same challenge again.
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff started off my 2014 challenge and I fell in love with this book. I don’t know if would call it my favourite for the year anymore (Ex Libris was more inspiring) but 84, Charing Cross Road is the kind of book I could recommend to every book lover (see I have answered the first two questions now). This led to the realisation that if I wanted to push myself into loving non-fiction maybe I should focus on these books about books. I have since read other interesting memoirs by bibliophiles including My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff and The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller.
I couldn’t tell you when I found joy in reading non-fiction but I do know it happened sometime this year and it isn’t just books about books. I have enjoyed memoirs by authors (Little Failure), actors (Yes, Please) and even someone contemplating the priesthood (The Dark Path). I have tried some books about the TV (Difficult Men), Crime (In Cold Blood), Feminism (The Fictional Woman) and I have discovered there is so much more to learn.
I want to read some more about literary criticism after reading Critical Theory and Literary Theory but I think I need to put more of a focus on psychoanalysis. I have an interest in psychology and I realise I do not know anything about it. I know I will need to read some more Freud and I am sure there are plenty of others I am yet to discover. I know this all seems so obvious to other readers but I am still navigating the literary landscape.
So far this year I have read twenty-three books and I am glad to say, I have no plans on slowing down. I feel like I have hit a groove with non-fiction and joining Nonfiction November in the hopes to push myself a little further. I have one book left to read in my planned reading for the month, which is Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Lesser but I might fit in a few more. I was thinking about reading Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir, has anyone read it?
I may not know how I found a love of non-fiction but it was somewhere between 84, Charing Cross Road and Excavation: A Memoir. I cannot believe how obvious it was, I have so much I want to learn about and yet I resisted for so long. Weirdly enough, if I think about it, I write non-fiction and I have a real passion about talking about books. I blog because I’m passionate about books and I cannot stop talking about them; I write essays like this because I want to get better at writing.
I love non fiction!
I’m slowly becoming addicted
I’m slowly becoming addicted