If You Loved These Books, Reads These Non-Fiction Books for #NonficNovember

Hello readers!

It’s November (WHAT!) and some of us realize at this point that we haven’t read yet nearly as much non-fiction as we wanted to in the beginning of the year (me included). So I decided to write a list of recommendations based on if you loved a certain book – mostly fiction, but I could not resist adding a few non-fiction ones there, too.

I have a few more recommendations on non-fiction if you’d like to read more:

Guest Post: Non-Fiction Recommendations by @cliosboardgames (an actual historian)

Non-Fiction Recommendations: From an adventurous Antarctic expedition to scandal in Silicon Valley

If you liked My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, read Know My Name by Chanel Miller

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Will I ever stop yelling about how good Know My Name is? No. This book is absolutely fantastic, Chanel Miller puts the herself in the forefront of the story of the sexual assault she suffered, making the reader see her as a person who has been victimized, and not as a faceless victim who might “destroy Brock Turner’s life with her accusations” or some nonsense. My Dark Vanessa did an incredible job of portraying the nuanced, difficult way in which a woman sees the horrible experiences she went through as a teenager, when she was groomed and raped by her teacher, and it broke my heart. I think Know My Name gives another point of view of what it is like to be a woman and suffer sexual assault, which complements My Dark Vanessa in which makes the reader see a few different ways that such an experience can affect girls and women. Both also deal with media attention and pressure to conform to an ideal of the sexual assault victim.

If you liked Milkman by Anna Burns, read Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

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If you are like me, after reading Milkman you were going through a billion Wikipedia pages to find out more about the Troubles. Say Nothing is the perfect book for both beginners and non-beginners on this topic, bringing it to life in one of the best non-fiction I’ve read in my life – this is an intriguing, intense, violent time in history and the author handled it in such a way that the book’s narrative is incredibly compelling. My husband is a historian and he also LOVED this book!

If you liked I’ll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, listen to Evil Has a Name by Paul Holes

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Michelle McNamara’s I’ll be Gone in the Dark got incredibly popular, for good reason: she did incredible work with trying to solve the case of the EAR and dying not long before he was eventually caught by the police using DNA evidence. Evil Has a Name is written by Paul Holes, who investigated the case, and this audiobook is full of interviews (also with Michelle McNamara and giving her some credit!). I liked McNamara’s book better, although it was not quite as nicely edited and finished liked Holes’, it was just more sensitive. Still, this was a chilling book to listen to and thankfully the EAR has been caught because this story made me MAD. I got teary on the chapter where he talks about her passing away. I think this complements her book well (but read hers first!).

If you liked Milk Fed by Melissa Broder, read So Sad Today by Melissa Broder

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One of the easiest ways to go into non-fiction is to read a nonfic by an author you already love. If you enjoyed Melissa Broder’s writing style and some of the themes in Milk Fed, I think you’ll really like So Sad Today – this is her collection of essays, in which you will see a lot of the themes that occur throughout Milk Fed (and a bit of The Pisces, too) as inspired from the author’s real life experiences. I was thoroughly entertained by this essay collection and liked it way better than Milk Fed, actually.

If you liked No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, read Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

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No One is Talking About This is a very current book that deals with a woman addicted to social media and is always online who’s forced to deal with an event in her life that changes the way she thinks and behaves on the Internet. This is a book that is very of our time, with a funny tone to it that goes from light to heavy sometimes. Patricia Lockwood’s writing reminded me strongly of Jia Tolentino’s essay collection, which is why I recommend it here: I loved the way Jia Tolentino’s essays made me think of my own relationship with social media (among other things) and how current it felt. While both books did not quite hit the mark for me, I find that fans of one will love the other for sure!