I buy a lot of non-fiction but mostly read fiction. It’s not that I don’t want to read the books that I buy but that, sometimes, the fiction is the easier option. I aim each year for 25% of the books that I read to be non-fiction, but I rarely achieve that. My non-fiction to-be-read pile is huge (dwarfed only by my crime novel pile).
I have, therefore, decided that I shall have a non-fiction reading challenge to try and make some inroads into my personal reservoir of unread factual books of all sizes and shapes.
I shall devote July and August to the challenge and I have set aside twelve books to read in that time. Non-fiction books take longer to read because they are usually longer than novels and they need more concentration. I have tried to pick different subjects for the books included in my challenge to ensure a bit of variety in my reading, although a lot of them are history books because that’s what I enjoy the most.
I am not sure if I will get all twelve books read in the time I have allocated, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t achieve my aim – there are no prizes on offer here.
I will list below the books that I intend to read – I would be interested to hear from any of you that have read one of these titles.
Wish me luck !!
| What to Read Next | Stig Abell | Books and reading |
| Diary of Two Nobodies | Giles Wood and Mary Killen | Diary/memoir |
| Whitehall | Colin Brown | History of place |
| Letters from the Suitcase | Rosheen and Cal Finnigan | Letters/memoir |
| Missoula | Jon Krakauer | Narrative journalism |
| The Sphinx | Hugo Vickers | Biography |
| The Appin Murder | James Hunter | True crime |
| Under Another Sky | Charlotte Higgins | Travel |
| The Old Ways | Robert Macfarlane | Landscape history |
| The History of Art | EH Gombrich | Art history |
| The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve | Stephen Greenblatt | Cultural history/religion |
| Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs | Barbara Mertz | Ancient history |
Anne Is Reading 
The only of these that I’ve read is The History of Art by Gombrich which was a set text for the first year of my degree. Good luck with this challenge. Non fiction does take more concentration so I tend to just have one to read while I’m reading something else too. I usually read my non fiction books over lunch as they are a bit easier to put down sometimes than a fiction book where I’ve got really invested in the story.
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It’s a reread for me but I originally read it about thirty years ago so it will feel like a new read.
I shall be reading fiction alongside the factual books but am hoping that the existence of a challenge will result in me concentrating harder on the factual stuff – we shall see…. Watch this blog…
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