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The Last 10 Nonfiction Books I Read
List the last ten nonfiction books you read. Only list ten. Every time you read a new nonfiction book, delete your first (oldest) vote and add your most recent read in your #10 spot.
1,985 books ·
933 voters ·
list created November 13th, 2012
by Lobstergirl (votes) .
Lobstergirl
5086 books
154 friends
154 friends
Lou
7166 books
11 friends
11 friends
Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)
545 books
375 friends
375 friends
Wanda
2323 books
17 friends
17 friends
Susanna - Censored by GoodReads
3288 books
860 friends
860 friends
╟ ♫ Tima ♪ ╣ ♥
2839 books
160 friends
160 friends
Casie
293 books
24 friends
24 friends
Ragnheiður
835 books
30 friends
30 friends
More voters…
Comments Showing 1-50 of 70 (70 new)
I adore the little boy with his glasses reading too! Great pic.
I didn't include "currently reading," because I could probably get the whole list from it!
Susanna wrote: "I didn't include "currently reading," because I could probably get the whole list from it!"If I had that many books going all at the same time, I'd never be able to finish anything ... all the time I have to read is an hour or so before going to bed and, sometimes, a bit more on the weekends. :(
I'm the hippie free love type when it comes to books.
Freewheelin' Susanna!
Wouldn't deleting the first book and replacing it with the newest one cause a person's list to be always 9 from the original 10, + 1 that keeps changing? (Unless you mean delete the first and add the most current in 10th place?) I'm wondering if the idea is to create a dynamic personal list so eventually all of a person's original ten will become a new list of ten, so older?/newer? reads move up the list in score. Or if that is not the intention of this list... have I taken all the fun out of this yet? ;o) (Hey, someone's always gotta do that for every listopia, am I right??)I guess for now I'll put my votes in order from oldest first to newest last, deleting the oldest and replacing it with a new one in 10th place.
Themis-Athena wrote: "Does "currently reading" count, or do we have to have finished the books before we can add them here?P.S. Love the li'l guy with the big glasses and the very old book!"
Up to your discretion. I would say if you have completed at least 76.392% of the book, it can be included.
Brixton wrote: "Wouldn't deleting the first book and replacing it with the newest one cause a person's list to be always 9 from the original 10, + 1 that keeps changing? (Unless you mean delete the first and add t..."Sorry, I stated it confusingly. You should list your ten books in the order you read them, #10 being the one you read most recently. Then when you read #11, delete #1 and put #11 in the #10 spot. I hope that's less confusing.
I'll put my votes in order from oldest first to newest last, deleting the oldest and replacing it with a new one in 10th place.
Yes.
Ideally the list will be constantly changing and dynamic, unless a handful of early voters never change their lists.
Cool beans, finally a way for later votes/books at the end of a list to work their way onto to the front page (as long as everyone keeps playing). :o)
Lobstergirl wrote: "Up to your discretion. I would say if you have completed at least 76.392% of the book, it can be included."OK. Seeing as my current nonfiction reads are decidedly closer to the vicinity of 6.392% completion, I'll postpone adding them (though content-wise I'm sorely tempted to vote them into every matching list in the GR universe). Then again ...
Brixton wrote: "Cool beans, finally a way for later votes/books at the end of a list to work their way onto to the front page (as long as everyone keeps playing). :o)"
Yes, there's definitely that!
Cool list, I don't read enough non-fiction
Lobstergirl wrote: "You should list your ten books in the order you read them, #10 being the one you read most recently. Then when you read #11, delete #1 and put #11 in the #10 spot. I hope that's less confusing."I usually do it the other way round: whenever I finish a book I add it to the list and then bump it to the #1 position, but this method is good too.
The 2 Khaled Hosseini books are fiction, and should be removed from the list.Love this idea!
34 voters and 353 books-- people are voting for more than 10. It had to happen, didn't it...edit: offhand, I see at least 110 excessive votes from 3 voters.
Brixton wrote: "34 voters and 353 books-- people are voting for more than 10. It had to happen, didn't it...edit: offhand, I see at least 110 excessive votes from 3 voters."
... not to mention more fiction entries on the back pages (the very last one being currently Upton Sinclair's Jungle).
Lobstergirl, do you want a hand in cleaning up the list?
Lobstergirl, thank you for starting this list. I do not read enough nonfiction. I want to change this and knowing this lists exists, will provide me with a good starting point. With librarians such as TA and you on the job, I am sure the list will remain true too. Thanks again so much.
Themis-Athena wrote: "Lobstergirl, do you want a hand in cleaning up the list?"Sure! Policing is hard work....
Lobstergirl wrote: "Policing is hard work...."Well, it is and it isn't, on this particular list. As long as we catch books being added in excess of 10 votes by a single voter, it's fairly easy to identify and remove them (essentially, every book with a score of 90 or less). But if somebody just votes for 11 or more books that other people have already voted for as well, I don't see how that can be prevented at all ... at least not by removing the books in question.
That said, I just scrapped all of page 4 and the better part of the bottom half of page 3 -- these WERE, without exception, books added by a single voter each in excess of 10 books per voter (in no small part, in an obvious effort to plug a number of particular authors' body of work).
I haven't read it, but isn't Icelandic Folktales and Legends fiction? The title sure sounds like that ...
Themis-Athena wrote: "I haven't read it, but isn't Icelandic Folktales and Legends fiction? The title sure sounds like that ..."I guess so....how are those things usually classified?
I frankly have no idea, but would guess they're either in a category of their own or considered part of "fiction." In some, but not all myths and legends there's an "oral history of our tribe" type of factor, but there's also enough of both a supernatural and a not-verifiably-fact-based storytelling element in virtually all myths and legends that would appear to take them, if nothing else, out of the realm of straight nonfiction ... ?(Research on myths and legends would obviously be nonfiction.)
For whomever knows how to fix duplicates, there's one currently at 36 and 67: None of Us Were Like This Before.
Love the variety of books and, indeed, subjects.
And there's Control Switch On at #38, which manages to occupy both fiction and nonfiction lists. How does it do that? Can we figure out once and for all what genre that book is?
Susanna wrote: "Love the variety of books and, indeed, subjects."Brilliant fun to watch. It would be a shame to see items removed that have no votes because that is the nature of this beast.
:O)
Lobstergirl wrote: "And there's Control Switch On at #38, which manages to occupy both fiction and nonfiction lists. How does it do that? Can we figure out once and for all what genre that book is?"This book has that perfect Zen-essence of being spam, and therefore transcends exclusionary labels such as "fiction" or "non-fiction." It is a book that always is added to every list, no matter the topic, and has become omnipresent in Listopia. I don't know about you, but I always feel my chakras aligning perfectly whenever I see it.
It's kind of a 'tween thing, isn't it. Very much based on her life, but fictionalized (so she wouldn't get sued, I imagine).
My list goes back just about a year (I started Fifty Years in Polygamy on May 24, 2013, thanks to my meticulous Goodreads record keeping). That isn't to say I don't read a lot (I do, voraciously), but I usually prefer Fiction.
Also, isn't #186 fiction? It's called Orphan Train.
Gennifer wrote: "Also, isn't #186 fiction? It's called Orphan Train."Deleted.
Can we do anything about this guy with the screen name of Darian who voted for 100 books?
Pat wrote: "Can we do anything about this guy with the screen name of Darian who voted for 100 books?"I sent him a PM. If he doesn't delete 90 of his votes I guess I'll have to manually remove those books from the list.
Thanks LG.I sent him a PM too.
I don't mean to pick on him, but I like this list and don't want to see it diluted.
What's the take on religious texts for this list? I clearly don't believe all the religious texts I read are non-fiction as I am not a Jewish Muslim Christian Buddhist Bahá’í Hindu, but I read them with the same intent as I read non-fiction (to further increase my knowledge so I can
Michelle wrote: "What's the take on religious texts for this list? I clearly don't believe all the religious texts I read are non-fiction as I am not a Jewish Muslim Christian Buddhist Bahá’í Hindu, but I read them..."I certainly won't delete any religious texts on the list. For believers they are nonfiction, and that's quite good enough for me.
Lobstergirl wrote: "I certainly won't delete any religious texts on the list. For believers they are nonfiction, and that's quite good enough for me. "Great and thanks! I just wanted to be sure how you felt before I messed around with your list. It will be a bit since I just started the book that made me ask.
I would delete something like "Joseph and His Brothers" by Thomas Mann, which is a novelization of the biblical stories of Joseph, but only because it's clearly fiction. Anything purporting to come directly from deities, or those like prophets who are officially channeling the thoughts and words of deities, can go on the list.
Lobstergirl wrote: "I would delete something like "Joseph and His Brothers" by Thomas Mann, which is a novelization of the biblical stories of Joseph, but only because it's clearly fiction. Anything purporting to com..."Makes perfect sense.
If you do a sort by date-read on the non-fiction shelf of this person it becomes clear that they stopped participating actively on this list on October 3 since they have rated and reviewed over 10 books they shelved as non-fiction since the last book they voted for on the list. I would like to delete any books on which they are the only vote on since these books don't qualify for the criteria described and, in my mind, are stagnating what is supposed to be dynamic list. I would additionally leave a note on their vote explaining why the deletions had occurred.
I would be more than happy to put in the work to delete stuff like this when the purging mood strikes me since I quite like the concept of this list, but don't want to do so against the wishes of the list-creator. Managing a list is hard so I am willing to offer my assistance for clean-up duty, but don't want to overstep my bounds.
Is it okay for me to make deletions of this nature, Lobstergirl? Or would you rather I didn't?
Please note, I'm not trying to pick on the person whose votes I selected. They were just an excellent example of some available clean up opportunities I saw.
I wouldn't want those type of deletions. While I would ideally prefer the list to be dynamic rather than stagnant, admittedly I have read nonfiction books since the ones I voted for and haven't added them to the list yet. Like others I'm sure, I get too busy to constantly vote all the books I've just read onto the various listopias. I appreciate that you want the list to be constantly changing and updating but I don't want that degree of policing of others' votes to be going on.
Sometimes I forget to vote here for six months, but that doesn't mean I've quit the list.
Susanna - Censored by GoodReads wrote: "Sometimes I forget to vote here for six months, but that doesn't mean I've quit the list."+1
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Anyone can add books to this list.
P.S. Love the li'l guy with the big glasses and the very old book!