Book notes

Category: Nonfiction

  • Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

    The reading/event for this book that Allie Brosh did with Powell’s Books on Zoom was one of the best things that happened in September, but it took me until now to actually read the copy of the book that I’d purchased—I think I was saving it for Christmas vacation reading? Anyway: I am delighted to…

  • Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell by Charles Simic

    Continuing with the theme of “books I bought while traveling but hadn’t read yet”: when I opened my copy of Dime-Store Alchemy, I found the receipt and was reminded that I bought this at Dog Eared Books in San Francisco in December 2012. Nearly eight years after having bought it, I can say that I…

  • My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

    I bought a copy of My Family and Other Animals at Brattleboro Books in Vermont years ago, based (I think) on nothing more than the colorful cover. As is often the case with books I buy, it took me longer than intended to actually get around to reading it, but wow I’m glad I finally…

  • Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk

    I’ve never read any of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels, and I basically only read this book because my boyfriend checked it out from the library and read enough passages from it to me to make me intrigued about the book as a whole. I am not at all sure that I want to read any of…

  • Mudlark by Lara Maiklem

    When I read about Mudlark in the New Yorker, I immediately knew I wanted to read it: a memoir about finding stuff in the mud along the Thames foreshore? Yes please! And now that I’ve read it, I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed it as much as I expected to, which is to say,…

  • The Quakers: A Very Short Introduction by Pink Dandelion

    Although I went to a Quaker high school that had Silent Meeting every week, and although I’ve had a few periods of sporadically attending meeting for worship at Brooklyn Monthly Meeting as an adult, before reading this book I didn’t know much about the history of Quakerism, or about current Quaker practice in areas other…

  • In the City: Random Acts of Awareness by Colette Brooks

    Near the start of In the City, Colette Brooks wonders: “What kind of a person is a city person?” and then offers her own answer: “One possibility: the kind of person who doesn’t feel the need to finish a jigsaw puzzle, who relishes jagged edges and orphaned curves, stray bits of data, pieces of stories…

  • The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

    This year I’m doing a project where I read one nonfiction book per month, which is more nonfiction than I normally read. It’s been interesting to read some nonfiction books that have been lingering unread on my shelves for ages, and also interesting to explore some types of nonfiction that I don’t normally pick up.…

  • The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

    Though the subtitle of this book is “The Murder at Road Hill House,” and though a lot of it does focus on that particular crime (the murder of a three-year-old child in 1860), it also covers a lot of additional ground, so it’s part true-crime and part cultural criticism about detectives, detective fiction, Victorian sensation…

  • Living Dolls by Gaby Wood

    This book, subtitled “A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life,” is largely but not entirely about automata, and also about the experience of the uncanny—often as it relates to the distinction between humans and robots or humans and dolls. The five chapters proceed chronologically from Jacques de Vaucanson (born in 1709) to the…