Top 5 Non-Ficton Reads for 2008

Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird by Gisela T. Kaplan
Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life of William Dampier by Diana & Michael Preston)
Defining the World by Henry Hitchings
By Hook or by Crook by David Crystal

Also enjoyed On the Edge by Richard Hammond and Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum.

My most memorable nonfiction reads of the year:

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
Boone by Robert Morgan
The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King
1491 by Charles C. Mann
Charlatan by Pope Brock
With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge
Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson
The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton
Two in the Far North by Margaret Murie
Escape from the Deep by Alex Kershaw
The Travels of a T Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
April 1865: The Month That Saved America by Jay Winik
Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson

Of these, April 1865 was my favorite.

I read a lot more fiction this year than I usually do, but still got in some good non-fic too. A very short list:

* The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
* The Battle for New York by Barnet Scecter
* Judge Sewall's Apology by Richard Francis
* Free-Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

I'm mostly done with The Summer of 1787 which is shaping up to be pretty good too.

*Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
*The God Delusion
*Do You Speak American?
*Letter to a Christian Nation
*I Am America (And So Can You!) (borderline fiction/nonfiction)
*The Physics of Star Trek
*Classical Mythology
*The Christian World: A Global History
*Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures

Here are my three favorites from '08

Roman Britain by Guy De La Bedoyere (touchstone might not be working)
Solving Stonehenge by Anthony Johnson
The seventy wonders of the ancient world edited by Chris Scare

Hmm...all ancient stuff. I must have been in some sort of mood in '08 :)

Of course there were other great ones this year too.

Like The end of the Old Order, Thermopylae, The Trojan War by Barry Strauss and Caesar : the life of a colossus.

On any other day, my top three favorites would probably have been different because I read so many great ones in the past year.

Here's my top 10. The starred ones are the ones that made my top 10 fiction and non-fiction for the year.

Top 10 non-fiction:
*Mary S Lovell - The Mitford Girls
Michael Young - Family and Kinship in East London
*Bruce Feilden - Learning to Bow
Jenna Bailey - Can Any Mother Help Me?
*Hugo Vickers - Cecil Beaton
John Bingham - No Need for Speed
Isabella Dusi - Vanilla Beans and Brodo
*Stuart Maconie - Pies and Prejudice
Andrew Collins - That's Me In the Corner
*Andrew Marr - A History of Modern Britain
Honorable mention: Michael Holroyd's Basil Street Blues and Mosaic, but they couldn't both go in and I couldn't choose between them

I read 51 nonfiction books in 2008, and had no problem identifying my top 3:

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside by Katrina Firlik

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster

Risk: the Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner.

I have a love-hate relationship with threads like this. I love them because they add some great ideas to my TBR stack. Hate them because my TBR stack is growing ceilingward. Soon it may topple...Then my TBR stack will be a TBR mess!

My TBR shelf, which is in my husband's home office has become TBR shelves, and my "wish list" is growing longer almost daily.

You know it's going to grow anyway...you might as stack it with quality stuff.

My top five non-fiction reads for '08 were:

- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard (review)

- The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace (review)

- The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson by Kevin J. Hayes (review)

- Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (review)

- Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature by D. Graham Burnett (review)

Message edited by its author, Jan 1, 2009, 11:00am.

My non-fiction reading in 2008 was limited but I do have two that I thought were fantastic:

13 things that don't make sense
An Appeal to Reason

Top 10 of 52 books read:

Down The Nile: Alone In A Fisherman's Skiff - Rosemary Mahoney
The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
Another Day In The Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life On The Inside - Katrina Firlik
Return To Wild America - Scott Weidensaul
The Ghost With Trembling Wings: Wishful Thinking, And The Search For Lost Species - Scott Weidensaul
Last Chance To See - Douglas Adams
Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain - Michael Paterniti
Travels With Herodotus - Ryszard Kapuscinski
Tender At The Bone: Growing Up At Table - Ruch Reichl
Dispatches From The Edge - Anderson Cooper

Message edited by its author, Jan 1, 2009, 10:21pm.

I too, read a lot of fiction this year. I read more than 5 nonfiction titles, but here are my "Top 5":
Hot, Flat and Crowded - Friedman
Hot, Flat and Crowded - too important to pick just once
Outliers - Gladwell
The Voyage of the Beagle - Darwin
The Omnivore's Dilemma - Pollan

My 2008 Top 10 includes several non-fiction titles.

Truman - David McCullough
The Day of Battle - Rick Atkinson
An Army at Dawn - Rick Atkinson
Miracle at Midway - Gordon Prange
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
Band of Brothers - Stephen Ambrose

Here are my top 5 non-fiction books for 2008:

All too Human by George Stephanopoulos
Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch (I can't believe I finished this one and couldn't read it in bed!)
The Second World War by John Keegan
Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars by Cynthia Gorney
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

My top 3 non-fiction works

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Frank Frisch: the Fordham Flash by Frankie Frisch

Typo by David Silverman
Perfect Figures by Bunny Crumpacker
Gumbo Tales by Sara Roahen
Bonjour Blanc by Ian Thomson
Travels with a Tangerine (and its sequel The Hall of a Thousand Columns) by Tim MacKintosh-Smith
The Longest Crawl by Ian Marchant
Rewind, Replay, Repeat by Jeff Bell
Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak

Message edited by its author, Jan 3, 2009, 5:21pm.

I read ~ 50 non-fiction books this year. There was only one 5 star:

Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

But I had 13 with 4-1/2 stars. Therefore, I award the remaining "favorites" to:

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

With honorable mention to: Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies, and The Zookeeper's Wife: a War Story by Diane Ackerman.

The Landmark Herodotus
The Road to Disunion Volumes 1 and 2
Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862
A World Undone: the Story of the Great War 1914-1918
I would say the best was Herodotus. That edition has 127 maps and 21 appendices by different scholars on subjects covered in the book. The book on Shiloh is excellent narrative history that gives you a real you were there type of account of the events of the battle.

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross - a fascinating look at twentieth century music: the composers, their music and their political and social milieux.
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin - neuroscience and music. Why does music affect us the way it does? From Mozart to Eminem.
Shakespeare: the biography by Peter Ackroyd... Says it all really.

Top 5 in rough order were:

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin - The evolutionary history of human anatomy.
The Canon by Natalie Angier - overview of one or two main topics in several fields of modern science.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman - investigates humanity's effect on the planet by theorizing about what would happen if all humans instantly disappeared.
1491 by Charles Mann - pre-Columbian history of the Americas challenging what the author feels are common misperceptions.
The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage - a history and culture of the telegraph with some obvious similarities to more modern communication networks.

Absolutely A Walk in the Woods and The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. Just posted the same thing in the favourite new authors thread.

I LOVED The Treatment & The Cure by Peter Kocan, which, after reading about the author, although catalogued as fiction, is clearly, most likely, a memoir.

On a more light-hearted side: The Urban Herbit by Sam MacDonald.

And I just finished The Economist Book of Obituaries which I reviewed for LT.

Can't get the darn touchstones to work for the first two titles or authors. Aaargh! So if you're interested, I've reviewed all of these books on my blog NoBSBookReviews

Message edited by its author, Jan 6, 2009, 7:00pm.

Top 5 of 31 Nonfiction reads in 2009.

1. If Grace Is True by Philip Gulley
2. Food Allergies for Dummies by Robert A Wood
3. Life Lines: Holding on and letting go by Forrest Church
4. Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor
5. Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

My top 5 non-fiction reads of the last year, in order of preference:

1. The Quantum Brain by Jeffrey Satinover
2. The Golden Bough by Frazer
3. Godel Escher Bach by Hofstadter
4. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
5. Shadows of the Mind by Penrose joint with Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

There's a bit of a scientific theme going on, but I don't read much non-scientific-non-fiction. Number 5 was a tie because both books were probably a bit long, and much harder going than the other four, but just about worth trawling through in the end. The Dragons of Eden would have made it onto the list if it was a bit longer, the book that is, not the list.

Message edited by its author, Jan 19, 2009, 4:26pm.

WhyMaggieMay (19)

Since you liked IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, perhaps you might enjoy ENDURANCE; Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. It does not have such a tragic ending, but is one of the most astonishing stories I have read in the last forty-seven years.

Message edited by its author, Feb 12, 2009, 4:00am.

I read some good nonfiction this year, but, unlike last year, there were no 5s.

The ones I rated 4.5 star were:

China Road by Rob Gifford - well-written and accessible study of modern China by a guy who lived there for a decade
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar - I loved reading the actual words of Rome's greatest generals (or his PR guy) about his conquest of Gaul, though I liked his book on the The Civil War more
Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak - fun and interesting travelogue showing what it might have been like to visit Ancient Rome
Cicero by Everitt - an interesting, well-written biography of the greatest orator of Ancient Rome
The Case of Abraham Lincoln by Julie M. Fenster - about Lincoln's only criminal case, taken on in the days leading up to the beginning of the Republican Party and Lincoln's decision to join and help build it.

JimThomson, I'm in the Global Reading Group and we're doing a "polar" read this year. That's one of three I've been considering, in addition to a Farley Mowat's polar adventure. Shackleton is currently winning the contest.

Message edited by its author, Jan 22, 2009, 10:40am.

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter
Rumored to become a movie! I can't wait.

With my long standing interest in military history, THE NAVAL WAR AGAINST HITLER (1971) by Donald Macintyre and GUADALCANAL, Starvation Island (1987) by Eric Hammel stand out from the rest. 'The Naval War Against Hitler' is written from the perspective of the British Royal Navy and is almost shocking in how many ships they lost in the Mediterranean Theatre trying to maintain their connection to their eastern Empire. To resupply the island of Malta it was acceptable to lose 3-4 warships and 8-10 freighters to get a single freighter to the island and unloaded. The Guadalcanal campaign was referred to as 'The one Battle which Cannot be Lost' because to lose it would mean the loss of Australia to the Japanese, and no toehold in the western Pacific islands from which our Airpower could hold the line until America could supply the huge Fleet and Air Force that could reach their Home Islands.

Message edited by its author, Feb 12, 2009, 3:59am.