Nonfiction November Week One

Throughout the month of November, bloggers 

Heather (Based on a True Story), 

Frances (Volatile Reader), 

Rebekah (She Seeks Nonfiction), and 

Deb (Reader Buzz) invite us to celebrate Nonfiction November with them.

Week 1 Prompt: (October 27 to November 2) – Your Year in Nonfiction: Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read? What were your favorites? Have you had a favorite topic? Is there a topic you want to read about more?  What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?  

Here goes:

• What nonfiction books have you read in 2025, so far?
• I've read 27 nonfiction books this years, not counting poetry, which StoryGraph categorizes as nonfiction. 27 is too many books to list but let's see if I can loosely categorize them:
• 18 memoirs/biographies. 2025 will definitely be remembered as the year of the memoir for me. So far I've read 16. Gulp!
• 8 history titles, there may be some overlap with the memoirs.
• 4 nature titles, again with overlap
• 5 essay collections
• 3 true crime
• 3 science
• 1-2 each in 20 other categories. StoryGraph has 58 genres they use to organize their titles. I'm looking at that list.

• What were your favorites? Here are the five star titles:
• There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights edited by Ashley Hope Perez
• The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden O'Keefe
• Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green 
• Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad
• Memorial Days: a Memoir by Geraldine Brooks
• Have you had a favorite topic?
• Clearly this year memoirs were my most popular nonfiction choices. My favorite books tend to be those where I learn something while I feel something. All seven of my top choices did that for me.
• Is there a topic you want to read about more?
• Politics as it relates to religion. Not sure I will actually seek out books on this topic, though. I am so sick at heart about what is happening in our country right now it is hard for me to stay engaged for long since I am guarding my own mental health. Maybe: 
• Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion When Cueltry is Trending by John Pavlovitz
• What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? 
• Community. I clearly have no trouble reading nonfiction, I just like to be a part of a reading community who interact with each other and who encourage one another by commenting on posts and suggesting new titles.
• I also want to explore some of the nonfiction books on the NYT Best Books of the 21st Century list and attempt to read at least one of them this month.
• Here are few from that list I'd like to read someday:
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• The Emperor of All Maladies: The Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Stay True by Hua Hsu
• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
• The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land Between by Hisham Matar
• Since I am also participating in Novellas in November I will continue to seek out short nonfiction titles since that challenge should really be titled "Short Books and Novellas" since short nonfiction titles are accepted for the challenge.
• Here are a few short nonfiction books which have caught my eye:
• No. More. Plastic.: What You Can Do to Make a Difference by Dorey 103 pages.
• The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett. 46 pages.
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. 190 pages. (This is one of the group-read books for the Novellas in November Challenge.)

-Anne