Category: Nonfiction

The 37 pieces in this book were written in the 1860s, published in a weekly magazine/journal that Dickens ran, and later collected and printed in book form. They range fairly widely in theme and tone, but as Daniel Tyler argues in his introduction to the edition I read, they can be seen to make up…

The Odd Woman and the City is a memoir in the form of a collection of vignettes, some of which are just a few sentences each, and others of which span several pages. Gornick writes about New York, about moving through the city alone or with friends, observing and overhearing, and she writes about books…

This book (which was originally published in Japan in 2011) came out in the US in 2014, and I’ve been meaning to read it since then—prompted partly by this NY Times piece, and then by friends who read it before I did. The main idea of the book appears on the first page: the idea…

In some ways, I feel like I’m the ideal audience for this book: I’ve read Keri Smith’s blog for years and I like her art, and I like walking, and I like art about walking. Five years ago I took part in a learning experience called the Walk Study Training Course, which involved reading about…

This was a slow read for me, and mostly not because I was savoring it. I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, or maybe this just isn’t the book for me: maybe I wanted a travel book more than I wanted a book about globalization and multiculturalism, or maybe the ways things…

After they graduated from Brown in 2007, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale promised they’d keep each other updated about their lives via email. They did, over the course of at least three years, and the result is this book, which is an epistolary memoir of their friendship during a period when they were living across…

I don’t think I’m likely ever to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. I like walking, and I sometimes like walking distances that are somewhat outside the ordinary (I’ve finished the Great Saunter, an annual 32-mile walk around Manhattan, 5 times). But I’d generally rather walk in a city than in the woods, and I have basically…

My personal rule for the TBR Triple Dog Dare is basically just: no library books. If it’s on my shelves, it’s fair game. This means that I’m fine with re-reading things during the time of the Dare, especially if I think that after a re-read, I might decide to give a book away and free…

A sheep that has been hefted has “become accustomed and attached to an area of upland pasture,” to quote from the definition near the start of this book, but that definition clearly applies, in a way, to James Rebanks as well. The Lake District is his home and his family’s home; he grew up watching…