A reader question:
I have enjoyed your site for years.
My wife, who has a rather stressful job, is looking for non-demanding non-fiction for summer reading. Are there any relevant posts on this subject? Thank you.
Sunday, May 24, 2026
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A few recommendations of some non-fiction I've particularly enjoyed in recent years: "The Wide Wide Sea" and "In the Kingdom of Ice", both by Hampton Sides; "The Wager" by David Grann; "The Art Thief" by Michael Finkel; and "A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza De Vaca" by Andres Resendez. Highly entertaining, eminently readable, and you might even learn something along the way!
ReplyDeleteA few summer vacations ago I loved “White House by the Sea,” about the Kennedys in Hyannis Port. This year I like the bipartisan look at life, love and tragedy in the 60s — 80s, “Called to Serve” by Reagan Cabinet secretary Donald Hodel.
ReplyDeleteLet Us Now Praise Famous Men. James Agee
ReplyDelete84 Charring Cross Road by Helene Hanff is a charming book of letters written between Hanff and a British Bookseller. It was published in 1970 and contains 20 years of correspondence that began in 1949. A charming book about books and bookish people.
ReplyDeleteThe Vanishing Velazquez by Laura Cummig - Cumming is an art critic that tells the true story of a Velazquez portrait that went missing.
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley is a fabulous biography of Jane Austen. This book is a great mix of Austen’s life and her writing.
Since here we are in WASPy-land and all into history and whatnot, the last few lighter books I enjoyed were Proto (a history of the Indo-European languages and their progenitor), A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (very light), The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (theory about proto-Indo-European that turned out to be correct), Who We Are A How We Got Here (this one and Proto are the best of the bunch I think, very thorough). Currently reading She Has Her Mother's Laugh about heritability not necessarily genetic (learned things I did not know about Pearl S. Buck for example). Alternatively, memoirs and (auto)biographies are fun vacation reading, assuming other people's lives don't especially stress one out.
ReplyDeleteWhy not dip into authors’ letters? Unedited. Easy to pick up. Easy to put down. Read a few at a time. You get an inside view of the the author’s personality and motivations and, read some of their best writing. Try E.B. White, Martha Gellhorn or… Groucho Marx! Or peruse the classic that comes to mind Memorial Day weekend, and a book everyone should read, “Dear America Letters Home From Vietnam.”
ReplyDeleteAgreed. “Letters Home From Vietnam” is a must. It especially should be read by those too young to remember the war.
DeleteMore recent: "Selected Letters of John Updike."
DeleteNot too long ago there was a similar post and folks raved about a book called "The Big House". Ended up buying a copy off Ebay for $3.99 (postage included)...but could never get into it. Ended up donating to our local church free library stand. But other readers were crazy about it.
ReplyDeleteI read The Big House when it was recommended here. In fact, it was the only book I took with me when we moved to Switzerland and it provided many hours of reading enjoyment, while I waited for our container to arrive. There are free books here everywhere and I frequently raid my favorite free library in town, which looks like an old London phone booth with shelves inside. Last time I came home with a tote full of books.
DeleteSeabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand is a great story that is well told. If you are not familiar with the subject, it's about the famous race horse Seabiscuit who was active during the 1930s and 1940s. And also very much about his owner, trainer, and the two jockeys who rode him into history.
ReplyDeleteThe Greatest Game Ever Played by Mark Frost centers around the 1913 US Open, played at The Country Club in Brookline, MA. The book is a both a semi-biography of the major players (Francis Ouimet, a 20 year old amateur golfer, and Harry Vardon, the 40ish greatest-golfer-in-the-world who is sort of on a comeback tour) and a report on the 1913 US Open itself. It's a little "literary journalism" and maybe not straight non-fiction in some ways. I don't play golf or even watch it, but I loved the book.
Both of these are books I've read more than once and enjoy immensely.
I agree with the comment about The Big House, ordered it, never finished it, completely bored by it. I recently read two books by William Least Heat-Moon, River Horse and Blue Highways and absolutely loved them both. He comes off not as a prepster but a bit of a hippie, but such eloquent writing, such a marvelous picture of the real America and vivid descriptions of remote places like Cape Porpoise, Maine, the eastern shore of Delaware Bay and Smith Island, and an attempt to cross the entire United States by boat from river to river with the most memorable parts about navigating the great Missouri River.
ReplyDeleteAbsorbing non fiction that takes you on a magic carpet ride.
Yes, I agree with the recommendation of "Blue Highways" - terrific book. Read that many years ago, long before I was aware that I had relatives in Cape Porpoise, Maine in the early 1600's. I'm going to have to go back and re-read that section. Thanks!
DeleteI strongly endorse The Big House. Family history told through the saga of the family house. Colt shows we are where we live not just how we live. He also discusses his family’s story with the emotion and melancholy that modern WASPs likely know all about. Likewise, his wife, Anne Fadiman, has written several delightful books of short essays that are smart and well worth your time.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the Anne Fadiman recommendation. You’ve inspired me to give her husband’s book, The Big House a try. Love adding more books to my TBR pile!
DeleteAnything by Peter Mayle. Martin Walker’s Bruno Chief of Police series is also a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Peter Mayle. I enjoyed "A Year In Provence".
DeleteFor this crowd John O'Hara or John P. Marquand. Marquand may be easier on the eyes. Novels of manners by He Men.
ReplyDeleteThe Art Thief by Michael Finkel. It is so oddly fascinating.
ReplyDeleteHere’s another recommendation for EB White. Read “One Man’s Meat.” These are essays written from and about his Maine farm. Explore travel writers also. Eric Newby is well known. “When The Snow Comes They Will Take You Away,” is an excellent true tale of his unique WW2 Italian experience that turns into a love story. Also… for travel writing from the viewpoint of a non-Westerner, read “Stories of the Sahara” by Sanmao. The book was a great success in her native Taiwan.
ReplyDelete84 Charring Cross Road! Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteAnything by Bernd Heinrich: Life Everlasting, Mind of the Raven, Winter World, etc. Also, a favorite is Endurance by Alfred Lansing about Ernest Shackleton & his men in the Arctic.
ReplyDeleteIt appears you were looking for non-fiction, but got a lot of recommendations for some really excellent fiction. In the non-fiction arena, I just finished The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. A great read!
ReplyDeleteTo the New Owners:A Marthas Vineyard Memior
ReplyDelete"La Vie: A year in rural France" by John Lewis Stempel
ReplyDeleteAnother E.B. White recommendation: Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith. It's available on Amazon.
ReplyDelete1776 David McCullough
ReplyDelete+\- 200 pages. Everyone should read “The Reason I Jump.” It is the memoir of a child with autism.
ReplyDeleteAlong the same lines. “Out Of My Mind.” It’s fiction. But you would never know it. And all you have to do is read the first couple of chapters to get the gist of it. You’ll perhaps find at your local library it in the Young Adult section. It’s the view of the world from a young girl stricken with Multiple Sclerosis.This book, also, everyone should read.
DeleteKatharine Graham's PERSONAL HISTORY remains the single best autobiography I've ever read. She was a fascinating woman doing a "man's job" (publishing the WaPo) in the middle of one of the great crises in American history. Daniel Okrent was the ombudsman at the NYT for a while, and his book LAST CALL: THE RISE AND FALL OF PROHIBITION was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteLessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, a wonderful book with a delightful heroine
ReplyDelete"Non-fiction" people! Anyway, there are some great suggestions here, and I second "A Year in Provence." Lots of readers like the books of Malcolm Gladwell and David Sedaris, although neither is to my taste. Here are some of my favorite easy-reading non-fiction in no particular order:
ReplyDeleteHemingway, "A Moveable Feast"
Wharton, "A Backward Glance"
Liebling, "Between Meals" and "The Earl of Louisiana"
Dinesen, "Out of Africa"
Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"
Leopold, "A Sand County Almanac"
Mowat, "Never Cry Wolf"
Anything by James Herriot
Happy reading!