What Non-Fiction Are We Reading Now (April thru June 2026)?

The Q2 reading period is in our sights ~ buckle up for an event-filled period of history!

Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite: The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes
Jaime Weinman
4/5 stars
Wonderful book about the history of the Looney Toons cartoons. Books On Entertainment

I'm reading A Hymn to Life. It's very well written.

Bang: The Complete History of the Universe, and working up to reading A briefer History of Time

As much as I am enjoying Friendship in Doubt, I think I may interrupt it yet again to read an LT Early Reviewers book that just arrived in my mail: Free Will: Resolving the Mystery.

I finished the compelling and excellent The Yellow House: A Memoir about several generations of an extended black family in New Orleans and, ultimately, how they were affected by the Water (i.e. Hurricane Katrina). One of the very best memoirs I've ever read. My review is on the book's work site and on my Club Read thread.

I've now started another memoir: Spycatcher: the Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer by Peter Wright about the author's years in the British Secret Service post-World War 2.

I'm reading Sidewalks, an early collection of essays by Valeria Luiselli, which I'll finish by this afternoon.

I'm reading Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion by Gabrielle Blair

I'm reading John Candy: A Life in Comedy by Paul Myers

I've just started reading A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America by Trymaine Lee.

I'm trying to read The Economics of Inequality, although I am finding it somewhat over my head.

the boy on the back of the turtle really enjoying it!

reading up on metric in Classical Greek, resorting to Bruno Snell, Griechische Metrik.

I finished the interesting Spy Catcher: the Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer by Peter Wright. The author was the Assistant Director of MI5, more or less the British equivalent to the FBI. Wright describes with relish the severe dysfunction, but also the successes, of the British counterintelligence agency thoughout the Cold War. My review is on the book's work site and on my Club Read thread.

I finished my third straight memoir, Roy White: From Compton to the Bronx by Roy White with Paul Semendinger. White was an important if often under the radar player for the New York Yankees from the mid-60s through the 70s. His memoir is more surface than substance, unfortunately, but I still enjoyed it. My review is on the book's work site and on my Club Read thread.

Currently on The Six Loves of James I by Gareth Russell which is excellent.

I've started reading Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, the first book in Simone de Beauvoir's lauded autobiographical series.

im reading a bio of david mcgullough history matters written by his daughter its a collection of essays letters and speech he wrote that hav not been published. im findind his words soothing and optimistic im not far into it but i hope it include comments on the books i have read john adams and americans in paris

I'm reading Orphans Preferred, a history of the Pony Express. You know, I was telling my family about this book, and not one of my three kids - they're in their 30s - knew what the Pony Express was.

I've finally started A Briefer History of Time a book I've been wanting to read for ages - so far not too difficult.

A Danger To The Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
by Adam Morgan
Interesting book about Margaret C. Anderson who fought in the Twenties to prevent book bans and produced her own magazine, The Little Review despite a backlash. Biography/Non-Fiction

I'm reading Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction by Jonathan Tepper

I'm reading Hope and Despair: My Struggle to Free My Husband Maher Arar by Monia Mazigh

Finally finished The Six Loves of James I by Gareth Russell and it was excellent. A great read and deeply researched. I highly recommend it.

Deep into Servants of Allah by Sylviane A. Diouf, a good read, full of information and thoughts.

I just finished an LTER title, Free Will: Resolving the Mystery.

>29 paradoxosalpha: What's an "LTER title"?

>30 amdial7: I think it stands for LibraryThing Early Review

>30 amdial7: >31 Nonconformisto:

Yes, LibraryThing Early Reviewers: https://www.librarything.com/ner

>32 paradoxosalpha: got it! TY

Over the weekend, I read Surregional Explorations by Max Cafard. Although Cafard's surregionalism is based out of New Orleans, the book was published by Chicago's Charles H Kerr, and Cafard repeatedly expressed gratitude to Chicago surrealists Franklin and Penelope Rosemont.

I finished Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a history and anthropological study of a village in the French Pyrenees in the early 14th century that was pieced together from the transcriptions of interviews done at the time by an inquisitioner intent on stamping out the "heresy" of the Cathar sect of Christianity. It's a fascinating (if occasionally a bit dry) study of a small, remote village and many of the individuals who lived there 700 years ago. My full review is on the book's work page and my Club Read thread.

>35 rocketjk: It pleases me to see that People continue to read it today. I love that one and should reread it.

>36 Buchmerkur: As you live relatively close by, I'd assume from your interests that you've been to that part of France. My wife and I found it all quite entrancing.

Colours of Films by Charles Bramesco, I hope to finish this this week and I am thinking of folllowing it with Science: A History by John Gribbin

>37 rocketjk: That is quite something to tie the reading to a visit in situ. No, other than having had a small presentation about that subject back in school, I hadn't visited that part yet. Who knows ... some day

(Every summer I slowly walk along the Way of St. James towards LePuy, but want to add the Stevenson trail and further to Arles and Marseille - all too far to the East ... So far I made it, in stages, from Berlin to Dijon.)

Other books of that school of historians I enjoyed a lot, as: from Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre; by Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms; Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant and The Lure of the Sea is what comes to mind. Great books!

>39 Buchmerkur: Thanks for that book list. I will keep them in mind. Cheers!

I've started Poverty, by America, and, whew, it starts with some bleak statistics.

What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? A Memoir and a Murder Investigation
by Kate Crane
4/5 stars
This is the true story of Kate Crane's father, Eddy Crane and the lengths that she went to find her missing father. This book was a great book and interesting! Non-Fiction

Don Rickles: The Merchant of Venom
by Michael Seth Starr
4/5 stars
This is an in-depth look at the merchant of venom, comedian Don Rickles. I enjoyed and remembered his movies and comedy shows!
Books On Entertainment/Biography

I'm reading Arrival: The Story of CanLit by Nick Mount

Next: Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas - a bit more scholarly written and needs more concentration to follow, but full of fascinating information.

Just joined LibraryThing. Retired military colonel, nonfiction reader.

Currently working through Daring Greatly by Brene Brown for the third time. Her framing on vulnerability and shame resilience keeps hitting differently at different stages of life. Before that, Atomic Habits again.

For anyone who has read both: do you find Brown's work holds up on rereads, or does it lose its impact once the core ideas are familiar?

Glad to be part of this group.

Remmy

Daring Greatly for a quick link to Remmy's book :)

I've been reading Queens at War this week. It came out last year and may have already been noted in this group, but the editors of the American edition did a sloppy job. "Louver" all over the place, instead of "Louvre", is the most glaring example.

They didn't seem to preview the ebook edition - the attached photo is of the genealogical tree from Edward III of England to Henry VIII and his siblings. That half-erased Etch-a-Sketch blur in the middle of the screen is the genealogical tree, to be clear (though it isn't).

While the genealogy is online in a million places, it's always useful to see who gets included when a tree is in a book, and what relationships are emphasized. Alas.

I'm reading A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides by Gisele Pelicot.

Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" sat on my shelf for years. Finally read it cover to cover this month, and I'm still thinking about it.

Thirty years in uniform taught me that suffering without purpose breaks people. Frankl's core argument - that humans can endure almost any how if they have a why - is something I watched play out in every deployment. The soldiers who crumbled weren't always the ones facing the worst conditions. They were the ones who couldn't find a reason to hold.

What hit me hardest was his concept of "tragic optimism" - not denying the difficulty, but choosing what you do with it. He spent years in Nazi concentration camps and came out still believing that meaning was available to anyone willing to look for it.

The chapter he calls "The Last of Human Freedoms" landed differently at this age than it would have at thirty. You don't control the mission. You control how you show up for it.

Finished it in two sittings. Haven't done that with a book in a while.

>49 RemmyHenninger: I appreciate your thoughts on this. I hope you add it as a review to the book, too!

>49 RemmyHenninger: One of my favorites.

Started Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent by Iain Pears - it's intriguing and (of course) very well told. It's the real-life romance between Larissa Salmina, a Russian art curator, and Francis Haskell, a British art historian. Fascinating and totally on-point the whole time with each section covering the same time period alternately for Larissa and Francis.

>52 Bookmarque: oh i love ian pears! must find this

I just posted my review of Fascism or Genocide, which I picked opportunistically off the "new nonfiction" shelf at the public library last weekend.

I'm reading Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

>53 cindydavid4: It was released with very little fanfare as far as I can tell. I'm a little more than half-way through and it's fascinating to read about the differences in their lives leading up to their meeting. The odds alone are staggering that they met at all.

For Pride Month, I am reading Legendary Children. I don't watch TV, so I missed RuPaul's Drag Race, but this book is constructed in such a way that it uses that reality TV show to illustrate LBGTQ history and culture.

Just finished The Edwardian Lady: The Story of Edith Holden, Author of the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady
by Ina Taylor by Ina Taylor which has wondering drawings by Holden and I learned about this incredible woman artist from the Edwardian age.

I gave up on The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I by Nancy Goldstone. So much information, so many names, such tiny print. Now I'm reading The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini. Much more my speed right now.

>56 Bookmarque: Thanks for that information I'm just a little over halfway and it just amazes me the amount of obstacles both of them faced And you're right the odds were pretty amazing . I'll be surprised that other people don't know about this He is a popular writer; Have you read any of his other books? Most of them or mysteries with many time and place changes that he is so good at I think my favorite one of hisStonefall But I'd also recommend the instance of the finger post I'd be interested in your comments on this book when you finish

>56 Bookmarque: Have you read any of his books? most of them fiction mysteries and they all have some time and place slips that are a lot of fun My favorite book of his is Stonefallwhere he plays up those slips quite a bit . I think this is his first nonfiction. I'm interested in reading what you thought about this book after you're finished

>58 amdial7: I love her diary: art, gathered poetry and observation during the days; and every now and then I follow up these or those entries, again and again. The biography promises a good read, I guess.

I enjoyed, going back further in time, reading Jenny Uglow, Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick - it also opens up a world of an artist and might be of interest.

>60 cindydavid4: yes! I love his books and have read almost everything he’s written. Slow coming, but worth the wait. And I think you want Stone’s Fall which I’ve read several times.

I've just started Lindsey Fitzharris's The Facemaker after years of meaning to get around to it... The story she opens the prologue with is really something! It merged with scenes from The Big Parade in my mind, the one informing the other. Not that the movie is documentary footage or anything, of course, but it was made by people who remembered it.

Yup r thats the one. Idont type well so I use spee to text which has its own problems and I think it might be time for a reread

I’m new to LibraryThing and want to read more nonfiction this year.

Currently reading history matters by David McCullough. This will be my second book I have read this year by McCullough, the first being John Adams.

>66 OrangeLFL: I really like David McCullough's writing. Path Between Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal and The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of Building the Brooklyn Bridge were my favourites.

The Sociopath Next Door
Martha Stout
4/5 stars
Interesting book about sociopaths and how they use their friends and families. Non-Fiction

>67 LynnB:

Adding those to my TBR wishlist.

My favorite McCullough was The Wright Brothers.

>67 LynnB: makes me think of Hart Crane and his grand poem The Bridge.

Just finished another excellent book by Ian Pears Parallel Lives a Love story from a lost continent 5*

>70 Bookmarque: mine was a greater journey:americans in paris

>68 JulieLill: JulieLill: The Sociopath Next Door stuck with me for years. Her estimate that around 4 percent of people operate without conscience changed how I read a couple of situations from my service days. Looking back, the tells were all there.

>70 Bookmarque: Bookmarque: This thread finally pushed The Wright Brothers to the top of my pile. A few chapters in, what strikes me most is how unglamorous the work was. Two men showing up every day, breaking an impossible problem into small pieces, keeping careful notebooks. McCullough makes patience read like adventure.

>74 RemmyHenninger: It wasn't a tale of derring do at all, but two guys just getting on with it the best they knew how, although I do occasionally see Bicycle Repairman (!!!) in my head when I think of them. If not familiar, add Monty Python to your search terms and it will come up.

I'm reading The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards by Jessica Waite

i finished The Facemaker this morning. Really engaging and informative.

I appreciate the compassion she had, writing about the patients and war victims, giving enough details to understand the challenges and innovations in plastic surgery without lingering unnecessarily.