A Year's Review of Non-Fiction
Truthfully, I didn’t think up the title for this piece. My brother did. We were on our way to a hotel in North Carolina for a weekend of hiking, not knowing what to expect, being the year of our overlord Covid. We left the city late in the evening on a Friday in September. The weather is ultimately unpredictable once you’re in the hills and high peaks of the Blue Ridge. When we finally descended on the long stretch of highway to Clayton, the fog covered the valley, making it quite difficult to see anything except the apparitions of headlights when they had already passed. My brother said, jokingly, “looks like the simulation stopped loading,” in response to the lack of features our vision was able to compute. And though I laughed, and still laugh, at this inside joke between us now, it seemed like the central computer of this bygone year was overrun, and the graphics of everyday life stopped generating.
I guiltily listened to “Odds Are” by the Barenaked Ladies way too many times for me to count in 2020, and the books I’m about to dispel a blurb on don’t feel as if I read them yesterday, but five years ago. It’s strange and heavy and bleak. It feels wasted to some degree. And 2020 will go down in history like that for the most part.
I remained stagnant: no new job, no new city, no new travel, no new heights climbed. Despite the malaise, being stagnant fared me for the better, especially considering the poor context so many people were thrown into by the mix of unexpected circumstances. My health insurance is still intact, my job is still secure, and I brewed fresh coffee every morning. And these books provided even more of a vicarious escape route from beyond those circumstances. They offered a brief sojourn from a world mired and stalled by a corrosive virus, a loud election, and the undeniable pain caused by racial injustices. I found new thanksgiving in my hobbies, grateful that I have put my identity into many different avenues of artistic creativity and productive leisure. Not just an identity in a particular occupation. I wish I had published more during the year, but almost everything I wrote bared a common depressive quality to it. Every short story ended with despair, and every journal entry ended with “I miss the mountains.”
There has never been an ungratefulness for books in my house, not even when school burdened us with reading such things as The Road or Lord of the Flies. I’m glad that my desires and troubles are validated and nourished somewhat by the reading and appreciation of someone else’s life story and the wisdom they impart. Of course, I don’t read books necessarily because of those qualities. I read them because it’s fun; it’s an avenue to live better or understand some believed nonexistent area of the world. These non-fiction titles did that for me this year, extricating my mind from the bog of 2020 or helping me make sense of it. I surpassed the grueling stagnation of the pandemic. The simulation loaded all the way when I opened the pages.
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Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Anne Lamott
Like some of the best things in life, this book came to me entirely by mistake. Happened upon in a second-hand shop, with tattered and tussled insides, I meant to read this in sections as I tend to find books on writing useful but hard to swallow all at once. This book is an exception in my mind.
I consider this to be a great counterpart to Stephen King’s On Writing, something I first read in high school and found to be a blunt iron. Great as his advice may be, Lamott’s book, by contrast, is a warm hug when you’re at your wit’s end with your writing. There are some hard truths to digest, but she gives them to you bit by bit. It’s easy to follow the advice, and it may just be compiled into the most excellent book on writing I’ve read to date. If you do decide to buy this book, don’t buy it new. Find one like mine, worn out and used. That way, you won’t feel bad for marking up the pages—with a pen as well as tears—and underlining things and dogearing.
Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans
A.J. Baime
This is a niche story for niche people who like history, cars, or the middle part of Venn diagrams. In the quest for Ford to make its name globally known for something other than mass-producing generic automobiles (and with some help from Carroll Shelby, legendary driver and car extraordinaire), they challenged leading champions Ferrari Automobilia at the renowned, twenty-four-hour Le Mans endurance race in France. It’s an excellent supplementary read for those who have seen Ford vs. Ferrari with Matt Damon and Christian Bale (also recommend).
The way it’s written is journalistic and the story isn’t muddied down by ten-dollar words or complex sentence structures. It hammers home the critical characters that shaped and sculpted the Ford racing program, the cars, the testing, everything. And it’s a good story full of accomplishment, deceit, struggle, and celebration.
Joel McHale
Did you know Joel McHale wrote a book? Because he did, and it’s hilarious. There isn’t another word for it, which makes it the best for this year.
For every desolate feeling the past year stoked, this book surpassed it in humor.
It’s written in pseudo-mockery of celebrity self-help books. The “advice” is absurd, the humor is ridiculous, the sarcasm is rampant, and the actual factual stories McHale tells are insane. He lets the reader in on “secret places” of his native Seattle—little unknown holes in the wall like Pikes Place Market and the Space Needle…for example. He describes how to “celebrity ride” on an airplane—in luxurious bliss. Or the best way to attend anything—drunk and happy. And taking as much free stuff as you can along the way.
It is an all-around delightful book if you need a healthy shot of cynicism and hilarity. Helpful tip: read all the footnotes. You’ll miss a lot if you don’t.
Across that Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
John Lewis
In the harsh spotlight of everything that came to pass over this year, it sometimes seemed excruciating. Following these stories of hurt and trauma and despair closely caused widespread angst and depression but, in my opinion, spotlighted and exposed some sharp corners in America that have been hotly brewing in the last few decades.
In remembrance, I actually got to shake Congressman Lewis’s hand once. It was right at the start of my college career, and for some reason that I’ve forgotten, we had to tour some buildings and some museums in downtown Atlanta. And either he was at one of these places or, less likely, we just happened upon him. But I got to shake his hand, and if I hadn’t realized the brevity of that gesture then, I do now. I was shaking hands with living history.
This book is one of encouragement and light. It’s not a self-help book, and it isn’t entirely devoted to outlining any history in complete detail. Just some stories here and there that back up sage wisdom. It’s a book about conviction, redemption, response, and overcoming darkness.
In this year’s bleakness, it was pleasant to read that bad things can be defeated by virtue and consistent discipline with some good trouble thrown into the mix. Change can occur in the most unlikely of persons, and hope can be restored. This title can speak to you, and I highly recommend everyone to read it.
I Hike Again: Mostly True Stories from 15,000 Miles of Hiking
Lawton “disco” Grinter
Back to basics, and my favorite kind of story: adventure tales.
I say this to almost anyone who informs me of their boredom with life. I tell them to go take a hike, either alone or with someone or in a group. Honestly, even if I go hiking alone, I always meet people. Even in the rain, the blazing heat, or the bitter, icy cold.
And it’s always lovely to read, especially in published form, that even though this is a subject matter and activity that I enjoy most in solitude, some people are perhaps even crazier about the outdoors than I am. (Not only that, but it’s way cooler to read that these people share the same fears: bear encounters, tick bites, weird, unworldly insects suddenly appearing on your skin, SPIDERS).
Now, most sinfully, this is the second collection of stories that the author has published. I have the first one coming. Despite that brief sin, and even if you don’t hike, take a journey into this compilation of stories. They’re wonderful to read, comedic, and a lovely adventure into the rocks and woods.
American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
Monica Hesse
Non-fiction is sometimes a challenging area for people to get into. I know I certainly struggled with it as I have always preferred fictional stories rather than real ones. Now, as I understand it, some people believe fiction is a dying genre and that non-fiction reads will be the only story on offer (unlikely, but based on the conversations I’ve had with some people, I can’t help but believe that this might be the truth sometimes).
This isn’t to say that non-fiction is a trashed and littered genre. Of course it isn’t. If you struggle with reading about real-life stories, pick this book up (or find yourself one of many true crime podcasts. There are numerous ones to start at this point). It’s a tale about a string of arson fires from 2012 to 2013 in a rural county in Virginia not really known to the national public. However, in those years, this story made national news headlines. It’s a mystery in the best way because, though Monica Hesse reveals the culprit early on, it is unknown to the reader why the fires happened at all. Juicy details, wonderful writing, true crime, and twisted love all reside in these pages, and you’ll finish this book faster than you will learn how to pronounce “Accomack county” correctly.
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Every Avenue — Tell Me I’m A Wreck
Dua Lipa — Break My Heart
London Grammar — Californian Soil
Motion City Soundtrack — Everything Is Alright
Lianne La Havas — Bittersweet
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