Non-fiction lit.

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While fiction is where I turn to most regularly, I often get the desire to read something non-fiction - mostly stuff dealing with astronomy.

Carl Sagan is one of my all-time favorites in this category. His book "Pale Blue Dot" was a truly humbling, life-changing read.

His ability to communicate things so easily is what separates him from a crowd of equally brilliant people who are nigh incapable of communicating with "average" people. For example, Brian Greene's books "The Fabric of the Cosmos" and "The Elegant Universe" are incredible works, but are much more intimidating reads that don't hold your hand the way Sagan was able to without seeming condescending or patronizing towards his readers.

I've got the "non fiction bug" again so I'm trying out one that's been recommended to me several times (and has been talked about here on MatchCut) - Mary Roach's "Stiff".

Any other non fiction readers out there? What topics do you find most interesting, and what books have you found to be great in dealing with said topic?

Hmm... I must've skipped over any discussion of Mary Roach. I'm reading "Spook" by her right now, and think it's alright. Too many times she results to being condescending instead of investigating people's reasonings that sound apt.

All I read is non-fiction.

Love economic theory, as well as books of Libertarian thought.

Reading a great book, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett. Great research into what the government knew about the Pearl Harbor attack.

non-fiction barty!

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hot, flat and crowded is pretty good. it answers as well as raises a lot of questions. more important, it bitch slaps superfreakonimic duo, hard, without meaning to do so. i still can't get over how badly written their "global cooling" chapter is.

on the other hand, as much as i admire his idea and passion, richard dawkins just doesn't cut it as a writer. have tried and tried to read his books, but never been able to finish one. will see how preservance i am with his classic the selfish gene.

I'll pretty much read anything by Michael Lewis or Jon Krakauer.

For true crime, there is no better book than In Cold Blood. Though The Executioner's Song and The Devil in the White City are both outstanding.

I've started reading "The Tiger" by John Vaillant.

Fascinating stuff.

"The Tiger" continues to enthrall. Vaillant is opening my eyes to the utterly fascinating world between China and Russia, where several completely different ecosystems merge together into this Frankenstein-esque climate. It's like an alien world, where you're just as likely to find a tiger roaming the snow-shrouded forests as you are to find beetles the size of your fist scavenging in piles of wood.

I tend to read more non-fiction these days. Husband bought me Simon Garfield's On the Map, which I am enjoying--not surprising since I'm such a map geek.

Hmm...I have a friend who's a cartographer in DC. I will throw that title his way!

I picked a non-fiction book up recently called "After Visiting Friends". Sounds really neat.

45 pages into David Kushner's "Masters of Doom", about John Carmack and John Romero, how they met, got started. I'm geeking out on every single page! Gotten emotional a few times actually, because I feel these are my true heroes in the real world. I've been playing games for about 24 years now and i'm unable to foresee a time when I'll no longer wanna do so. The bit when Carmack figured out how to recreate a single level from Super Mario Bros 3 on a humble pc, worked into the early hours to get it done and dropped the floppy with said level on Romero's desk, only for the latter to discover it the next morning - he went bananas - is joyous.

Really enjoyed "The Tiger" and I strongly recommend it.

Incredibly tense finale.

Since early last year, I've had a damn hard time staying focused on fiction. I went from reading a book a week to barely reading a book a month.

I did, however, read a lot of articles, technical writing, and a lot of synth manuals.

I'm going to try to switch over to non-fiction to get back into book reading.

I just picked up Eric Larson's Thunderstruck and Ben Macintyre's Double Cross - The True Story of the D-Day Spies.

I'm looking for and opened to more suggestions. I'd like to read some non-fiction on some of the following subjects:

Music technology
Fortean / paranormal (non-fiction, LOL...I get it skeptics)
Vietnam war
Secret Societies
Post WWII Japan - right after the war
Theology
Video game history
Comic book history
Texas Rangers
US Marshals
The end of the wild west
Archeology
Occult
Oddball people (like Emperor Norton)
Clandestine operations