So much nonfiction this summer

This summer was the  summer of nonfiction,which is quite unlike most of my summers, during which I usually read tons of YA fiction. In fact, I rarely read nonfiction, although because I carefully choose my nonfiction, I almost always like it, so you'd think I'd do it more often. Go figure.

Anyway, here's my list of nonfiction titles for this summer with a short blurb about each.  Most of these would not appeal to readers younger than high school.

Bindi Girl - A young woman's journey to India, back to the US, and back to India again. Fascinating stuff to someone like me who's obsessed with India. Of course I immediately wanted to go there.

The Elephant Whisperer - this is the one book middle schoolers might enjoy, this is the story of a wild animal refuge in Africa that takes on a troublesome herd of elephants.  Amazing!

To See Every Bird on Earth - The story of a man whose father was obsessed with birds. Heartbreaking and exalting by turns. I, bird nerd that I am, adored this book.  It was my favorite of the summer.

The Year of Living Biblically - Very interesting book by AJ Jacobs, one of the quirkiest guys I know who in this book set out to follow every law in the Bible for an entire year.  turns out that's challenging for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is all the contradictory laws.

Kitchen Confidential - Lots of bad language in this book, but it was really interesting to hear about the subculture of fancy restaurants. Written by Anthony Bourdain of TV fame. Longer review here.

Butterfly Mosque - this was the book that I thought I'd like the best but which turned out just not to pull me in deeply as I'd expected it would. It's a love story between a Muslim man and a woman who converts to Islam. Longer review here.



Gift from the Sea - A lovely book written on Sanibel Island where I was visiting this summer.  Perfect to read a chapter at a time during my stay. Lots of philosophizing on being a woman.  I really enjoyed reading it the way I did surrounded by the things Ann Morrow Lindbergh was when she wrote it. Even so many years later, many of her thoughts ring true.

Not quite finished with Steve Jobs but it is also fascinating stuff.  that guy was surely a genius, but he was also a head case and I don't think I would have liked him very well personally.  I certainly would not have liked working for him!

Butterfly Mosque and Kitchen Confidential - adult titles

The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey to Love and Islam is a book I heard about recently that sounded really interesting to me.  It's a memoir, my favorite genre of non fiction, and is the story of a young American woman who moved to Egypt, converted to Islam, and married an Egyptian man, all near the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.  I found it to be very interesting, but I wasn't as completely pulled in as I expected to be.  It was a book that would definitely provoke a lot of good conversation in a book group, because there was a lot of discussion about faith, acceptance, family, love and culture.

Kitchen Confidential is the book by Anthony Bourdain that my husband's reading group is reading next month and it's an expose of his life in the restaurant industry.  This book has a LOT of bad language in it, so it's definitely for adults, but it was really, really interesting.  He and his friends were pretty wild, and his chef experience sounds a bit harrowing at times. He wrote the book long before he had his TV show and everything, but he'd already been a chef for over 20 years.  There was a lot of background on the restaurant industry combined with a lot of personal anecdotes, written in a staccato style that's just like his personality.  We listened to the book on CD and it was read by the author, so that was a nice little bonus.