What Was The Best Non-Fiction Book You Read In 2023? (4/7/24)

[Marc]

Best non-fiction read of 2023 for you?
(Does not have to be a book published in 2023, just non-fiction that you read in 2023.)

[Alwynne]

Several from Fitzcarraldo stood out: Simone de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death; Ian Penman's Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors; Brian Dillon's Affinities.

Also enjoyed Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West's Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.

I found Hua Hsu's Stay True compelling.

Nina MacLaughlin's Winter Solstice: An Essay I've been following her columns in Paris Review for quite a while.

Also liked queer modernist artist Romaine Brook's selected memoirs Strange Impressions

[Sam]

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World was my favorite book of the year, fiction or nonfiction.

[Luke]

A Writer's House in Wales - Jan Morris
The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues - Angela Y. Davis
Black and British: A Forgotten History - David Olusoga
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays - Esmé Weijun Wang
Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey into Guns - R.J. Young

Plus a special mention for The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, which didn't get a five star from me but is epic in its own right.

[Lesley]

The best for me was probably Blue Nights by Joan Didion, which took me by surprise as the other work of hers I’ve read hasn’t particularly resonated with me.

[Bill]

I don't read a lot of non-fiction. And I assume art gallery catalogs and similar, The Comics Journal, etc, don't count. But favorites from 2023:

New Juche, Heat Death -- Issue 1: Artefact Insulam: a Sebald-esque wander through pandemic-decimated Phuket during lockdown, with gorgeous photos.

Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

Ina Park, Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs

[Lark]

A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma by Noreen Masud.

[Stacia]

The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcripts of the 1912 Senate Investigation, ed. by Tom Kuntz.

Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism by Jack D. Forbes.

[LindaJ^]

The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America by Christopher C. Gorham

[Kathleen]

I can second Aubrey's The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, and Bill's Poverty, by America. I thought both were very good.

My favorite for the year was probably Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin.

[Ruben]

The City of the Living by Nicola Lagioia
"Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide by Sven Lindqvist
Changer : méthode by Édouard Louis

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Last year I read three non-fiction books that I thought were excellent:


Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson


The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown


Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

The last two, both set during the Great Depression, pair well together by the way.

[Hester]

What a great thread and so many interesting choices. I will add Géraldine Schwarz Those Who Forget: My Family's Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning and The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts. Both books explore memory, loss and forgetting in very different ways . The latter is an excellent way of understanding the colonial history of the Russian Empire and the cultural aspirations of the Soviet Union .

[Marc]

I third (?) Poverty, by America (Desmond) and also loved The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays (Wang), although I did not read the latter in 2023.

I read 7 or 8 non-fiction picks from last year. I think I rated all of them 4 stars. My favorite was probably We the Parasites by A.V. Marraccini. It was a fascinating approach to reading and how we related to art and culture along with the role of criticism. Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber was also quite interesting.

Some less weightier reads that were very upbeat/inspiring: How to Be an Artist (I find Jerry Saltz to be obnoxious, but in a really endearing kind of way) and Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier (a book of aphorisms; would probably make an excellent graduation gift).

[Janet]

I would say that the non-fiction work that stayed with me in 2023 was Fintan O’Toole’s excellent We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. I read it and also listened to parts of it on a summer road trip with my husband who was equally captivated by it because he has relatives stlll living in Ireland and it filled in some historical details. O’Toole wrote about how much and how radically Ireland changed over the course of his lifetime – transitioning from a primarily agricultural economy controlled by a small band of wealthy cattlemen with an undereducated population beset by a constant exodus of its young people forced to leave in search of employment -- to a fully modern 21st century society in which its young were able to fully participate. O’Toole is in his 60s, so he covers Ireland of the 50s through the present day and includes the rocky years of The Troubles. After reading this excellent history I re-read several Irish novels set in this period, paying more attention to the scandals of the days, for example, the Magdalene laundries and the sex scandals in the Catholic church. O’Toole is a wonderful writer and his history is well-worth reading.

[Jess]

I just looked back and realised I read no Non-Fiction at all in 2023! My reading is always heavily fiction but usually there are one or two non-fictions in there! I suppose the closest was Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic which is a graphic memoir. I did enjoy that.