TwilightEL
Well-Known Member
What kind of nonfiction do you people like to read?
My favorites are books that talk about some specific thing (a person, an invention, a species, a political movement), like the Rats book whose author's name I've forgotten, and tie it in to general history while giving lots of information on it. Recently, I've started a book on Nancy Drew--it elaborates on all her creators and publishers while giving information about the time and place these people lived in.
Another kind of nonfiction book I've been enjoying are math and science books. I'm not that great at calculations, but I love reading about abstract theories like the kind Stephen Hawking describes. I genuinely find reading some mathematical proofs interesting.
I'm not sure that this belongs in this thread, but I also recently read The Feminine Mystique. I didn't like Friedan blaming bad mothering for autism, schizophrenia and homosexuality. She was complaining the pop psychology of Freud in one section, then turns around and does the same thing with these inaccurate theories. Despite this, I really enjoyed the book. The two points I thought were most important were 1) that glorification of mothers can inadvertently hurt women's rights and 2) that all people need to fulfill themselves by finding and pursuing a purpose in life.
When she was talking about number 2, she wrote about how young people in college find it so difficult to describe what they want to do and how scary it is to have to sacrifice things in order to discover who you really are--not just through introspection, but through hard work and creativity. I know I'm just a dumb kid, but I still felt like "Yes, that's exactly what it's like" in that section--having to give up who you used to be in order to become something more.
The Feminine Mystique also sort of fits in to the books I was talking about in the second paragraph. It details the transformation of feminism from its conception to the 60s and how the "feminine mystique" was created.
My favorites are books that talk about some specific thing (a person, an invention, a species, a political movement), like the Rats book whose author's name I've forgotten, and tie it in to general history while giving lots of information on it. Recently, I've started a book on Nancy Drew--it elaborates on all her creators and publishers while giving information about the time and place these people lived in.
Another kind of nonfiction book I've been enjoying are math and science books. I'm not that great at calculations, but I love reading about abstract theories like the kind Stephen Hawking describes. I genuinely find reading some mathematical proofs interesting.
I'm not sure that this belongs in this thread, but I also recently read The Feminine Mystique. I didn't like Friedan blaming bad mothering for autism, schizophrenia and homosexuality. She was complaining the pop psychology of Freud in one section, then turns around and does the same thing with these inaccurate theories. Despite this, I really enjoyed the book. The two points I thought were most important were 1) that glorification of mothers can inadvertently hurt women's rights and 2) that all people need to fulfill themselves by finding and pursuing a purpose in life.
When she was talking about number 2, she wrote about how young people in college find it so difficult to describe what they want to do and how scary it is to have to sacrifice things in order to discover who you really are--not just through introspection, but through hard work and creativity. I know I'm just a dumb kid, but I still felt like "Yes, that's exactly what it's like" in that section--having to give up who you used to be in order to become something more.
The Feminine Mystique also sort of fits in to the books I was talking about in the second paragraph. It details the transformation of feminism from its conception to the 60s and how the "feminine mystique" was created.