I'm giving non-fiction a chance

The Reading Nook #13

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I'm giving non-fiction a chance

For many years, I’ve had a poor opinion of non-fiction books. As a proud fiction girlie, I’ve always found non-fiction boring and pretentious, like the LinkedIn of book genres. So apart from the odd non-fiction books little Fatima somehow got through, most of my reading journey has been spent completely shunning non-fiction, until last year. 

I got a copy of the Collected Speeches of Obafemi Awolowo from my uncle. Because of my slight interest in Nigerian political history, in theory, I’d have liked to find out what the book contained. But in reality, reading non-fiction was such a drag when reading is meant to be fun and exciting. This was around the time when I discovered it was okay to read more than one book at a time and I didn’t have to solely read a non-fiction book, but I could read it alongside a novel. So I began reading ten pages of my non-fiction book or reading it for fifteen minutes before bed and it worked. I very, very slowly got through the book. And while I enjoyed reading it at times, it still didn’t change my opinion on non-fiction.

I recently discovered that the reason I felt this way was because I believed non-fiction only existed in the form of either self-help, books about business, or extremely boring memoirs about people I didn’t care about. I just realised that things change when you’re reading a non-fiction book around a topic you’re interested in and that’s so mind blowing to me. If you’re interested in cats, read a book about cats, if you’re you’re interested in plants, read a book about those, if you’re interested in sustainable fashion, read a book about that, and so on. There are so many books out there focused on a vast variety of topics.

Realising this has gotten me excited about exploring my interests through non-fiction books because there is a lot out there to learn. From previously reading absolutely no non-fiction books in a year, I’ve read six this year which is huge for me. They’ve explored writing, feminism, global political history, yoga and there were two memoirs I enjoyed. Although I might not get through it as fast as I usually do with novels, the pace isn’t important if I’m enjoying it and excited about all the new ideas and perspectives I can get. Choosing to listen to my non-fiction through audiobooks also helps.

So I’m giving non-fiction a chance. I’m not focusing on coming across as an intellectual who reads business books or self-help, rather I’m focusing on chasing my curiosities and interests through nonfiction books and who knows what I’ll learn and discover. It’s exciting. 

What is your relationship with non-fiction? I’m curious to know where readers stand on this topic.

What kind of reading month was it?

Okay. But towards the end, I ran out of steam and didn’t feel like opening a book at all. I also read two lovely translated Japanese novels and they have a certain feel to them that I like.

September Reading Journey 

September Reading Journey

Yara is the first-born daughter of Palestinian parents who immigrated to the United States after getting married. Evil Eye takes us through her days as a wife and mother, of two little girls, who works at a university teaching art and is in charge of graphic design and photography for the school. It also slowly discloses her past to the reader through snippets, showing us the times when she and her family returned to (what is left of) Palestine during summer and Yara spent her time cooking with her grandmother; we see she and her five younger brothers being a horrified audience to her father’s physical abuse of their mother; we witness her mother pouring her frustrations on little Yara while interminably claiming she’s been cursed by the evil eye, and so on.

As we get into the book, we see that Yara is finding it more and more difficult to get through her daily life as she’s overwhelmed by all she has to do as a wife, mother, and employee, and feels as if she’s drowning. However, Yara tries hard not to complain because she believes her struggles can never compare to the kind her mother, grandmother, and a myriad of Palestinian women before her have gone through. Yara can’t admit that although her life looks different from theirs, it’s still not so great.

Raised with so many restrictions like being unable to leave the house for anything other than academic purposes and not being allowed to move away for college—things her younger brothers could do, whenever she complained, Yara’s father assured her that she could do whatever she wanted when she got to her husband’s house. So when she meets Fadi, who seems less traditional than the other Palestinian men she’s met, she jumps at the opportunity to marry him at 19, craving freedom from her family. But nine years after her wedding, her life doesn’t reflect this. And though it seems like she’s a woman in control of her life, it’s all a façade.

After an incident at work, Yara discovers she has a lot of trauma that’s wearing her down both mentally and physically and decides to work on that. She uses journaling as a tool and her journal entries were a window into her traumatic past, highlighting life-changing moments for her.

Family and generational trauma aren’t topics I’ve necessarily thought about but this book does an amazing job of portraying how the patterns and experiences of the ones who came before us can greatly impact our lives. It also gives us a (fictitious) personal account of the al-Nakba through Yara’s grandmother and this is an opportunity to see how this event greatly affected and still affects Palestinians today.

This is a powerful story of trauma, resilience, and womanhood, amongst other things. The events of the book gave me so many things to be angry about and the unfairness very slowly builds up to a crescendo that makes you want to stick to the story and see how it pans out. As books centred on women’s stories are usually amazing, this was was too and I’d totally recommend it.

You should read it if you like stories centred on women who work through their struggles and ultimately choose themselves.

A quote I liked from the book:

But change didn’t happen with a single recognition, a single step in the right direction. It was messy, courage come and gone, steps taken forward, then back. It was bravery laced with fear.

The Jakarta Method is a book that collates some of the injustices that happened during the era of the cold war, detailing why, where, and how it all happened. Bevins, who is a journalist, deeply researched and worked on this book for a long time, even temporarily living in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, and interviewing eyewitnesses and victims to reveal and document the role the US played in creating the world we live in today and the massacre that took place in Jakarta as well as many other ‘third-world countries’. 

The first time I heard the word communism was in government class in secondary school and I remember thinking it wasn’t a horrible idea. I never gave it much thought, but I knew through the American media I consumed that communists had a bad rep. I remember how, in an episode of The Office, Dwight called someone a communist like it was an insult. This book made me understand why the world views communism the way it does—like a poison or cancer that destroys.

The main event this book covers is the government-sanctioned massacre and extermination of communists in Jakarta, in 1965. But it also focuses on events leading up to that such as the victory of the US getting Latin America (Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, etc) and many other countries, to vehemently champion anti-communism as well as events that were inspired by the Jakarta massacre which acted as a sort of inspiration and blueprint for other massacres, hence the title of the book—the Jakarta Method.

The lives of various victims of the massacre are used as a sort of starting point and thread to lead us through the events the book documents. We see the way the US, UK, and other world powers, identify threats to them in ‘third-world countries’—be it a leader, a political party, a union, or simply an idea—and exterminate it. It gives details of the roles the CIA played in multiple countries—smear campaigns, espionage, propaganda, so much propaganda—using declassified documents among other things as sources.

This was an eye-opening book. I’ve always known the US played a huge role globally behind the scenes, tweaking things in their favour and for their benefit without regard for thousands of lives, but I never fully grasped the extent to which they did this and this book shows us only parts of it. It was a painful book to read. It revealed so much bloodshed with the numbers going to millions. So many lives snuffed out like they never mattered. But I’m glad that I read it and am now aware of so many things I was ignorant of.

You should read it if you are trying to understand how the world turned so anti-communist and Americanised (not globalised) or you’re curious about the role the US played in creating the system the world operates today.

The Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul is located in a dingy building in an alley and it’s run by a weirdly chirpy doctor and an aloof nurse who prescribe cats to patients. There are five chapters in this book, each focused on different characters, and each named after the cat prescribed to the protagonist of that chapter. 

The premise of this book is that a cat can solve almost any problem. With each chapter, we meet different characters whose life situations push them to find the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. They never imagine that after consultation with the doctor, they’d be leaving with a cat in one hand and a bag containing various paraphernalia for caring for the cat—as well as a pamphlet that indicates the cat’s name, age, feeding, caring details and personality—in the other.

Some of the characters we meet are a young man in his early twenties burdened by his toxic work environment and verbally abusive boss; a work-obsessed entrepreneur who designs bags; a mother and her young daughter who can’t get along because the mother constantly dismisses her daughter’s feelings and ideas, and a man who feels isolated at work and home with his wife and daughter, believing he’s always on the outside watching. After getting a cat from the clinic, the problems which led them to the clinic are somehow solved or at least better than before.

I can’t lie, this is a weird book but it was so fun and I loved reading about cats! I also like that the author incorporates magical realism into the story and slowly reveals it to the reader. There are also illustrations of the cat of the chapter at the start of every chapter which is such a lovely addition.

You should read it if you’re a cat lover or in search of a hopeful and wholesome book that will bring a smile to your face.

Set in Mexico in the 1920s, we follow the story of Casiopea Tun who was born under an unlucky star and believes this is the reason for the unfortunate events that have occurred in her life. After the death of her father, she and her mother are forced to leave Mérida, the capital of the city, and move to her mother’s family home in the small town of Uukumil. After her mother married a man the family deemed lesser than because of the darkness of his skin and his social status, Casiopea’s maternal family is less than enthusiastic about her existence, believing her to be a taint on their name. 

Eighteen-year-old Casiopea and her mother spend their days toiling away at the family house to earn their stay. Casiopea tends to her grouchy grandfather, hoping to one day escape to Mérida when she gets the money her grandfather promises he left her in his will. But her already difficult life at the family home is made more difficult because of her cousin Martín, the only son of their grandfather’s only son. Martín, a privileged and spoiled young man, despises Casiopea and ensures that he seizes every chance he gets to punish her, whether that’s through a slap, or reporting her to their grandfather.

One day, when the entire family goes on a journey and Casiopea is left alone at home as punishment for talking back to Martín, she finds the key that her grandfather constantly wears around his neck. It opens the ominous chest in her grandfather’s room that is out of bounds to everyone. Out of curiosity and a wish to find money stowed away in the chest which she can use to escape her dreadful situation, Casiopea opens the chest. But instead of money, she finds bones in it and a shard gets stuck in her finger. Suddenly, the bones transform into a person and standing before Casiopea is Hun-Kamé, the lord of Xibalba (the Mayan underworld), who was trapped for the last 50 years in that chest by his twin brother, Vucub-Kamé. 

Before the shard of bone in Casiopea’s finger can be removed, she has to follow Hun-Kamé on the quest to find his missing elements—his eye, ear, finger, and jade necklace—to regain his power and hence, remove the shard. However, as long as the shard is stuck in her finger, Hun-Kamé will feed off of her, slowly killing her and slowly turning human himself. Apart from the fact she has no other choice if she wants to survive, Casiopea sees this as a chance for an escape from her grandfather’s house and also a chance for adventure. She and Hun-Kamé begin the quest—they travel, meet demons, and summon ghosts and phantom creatures—that will end in a final showdown with Vucub-Kamé and his team.

This was an exciting book filled with so much tension. The stakes are high because there is a lot on the line and that makes the whole thing much more interesting. I found the world building that incorporated Mayan mythology impressive. 

You should read it if you love mythology or plots with quests.

I was so excited when I discovered this book because as I mentioned above, reading nonfiction centred on a topic you’re interested in is an exciting experience and since I began my yoga practice, I hadn’t consumed any piece of literature on yoga. Also, in a society where the standard image of a modern yogi is a white, skinny woman, here is a Black, fat woman practising yoga, teaching it, and writing a book about it!

This book starts out with an introduction to yoga, discussing the eight limbs of yoga which reveal that the asanas (poses) are merely one out of many parts of yoga. It also includes a brief history, differentiating ancient and modern yoga and lists the different types of yoga, what they entail, and what they offer your body and mind. The author also answers some common questions people ask her as a yoga instructor. All of this would be good for someone getting introduced to yoga or even people who have practised for a while and would like to know more.

Throughout the book, the author dives into her journey and relationship with her body and the circumstances that led her to yoga. There are many pictures strewn throughout the book, some from the author’s past, and others showing visual depictions of certain asanas, the correct ways to do them, and their variations.

I loved the section on yoga sequences when the author shares combinations of poses she uses when she wants to feel a certain way—balanced, grounded, to let go of fear—because it made me realise I could also create my own yoga sequences and tailor them to fit my practice which is something I previously never considered. I also loved that this book is a sort of ode to fat bodies (the author also talks a bit about how variations and tailoring certain poses to fit different bodies can be of help to people with disabilities who are interested in practising yoga) and how “every body” can do yoga and it isn’t limited to certain body types.

You should read it if you’re interested in getting into yoga and don’t know where to start or you simply want to learn more about yoga. 

This was the other translated Japanese fiction novel I read this month and three things drew me to it: first, it was recommended to fans of Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop which I read and loved, second is I love books about books, and the third reason is that it had a cat on the cover (unfortunately, there was no cat in the book though😔).

Similarly to We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, this book contains five chapters that each focus on five different characters whose lives change after meeting Sayuri Komachi, a librarian, who recommends a book which somehow has the potential to change their perspective and hence their lives.

Across all the different characters and their stories, they all struggled with work in some form: getting a job, struggling with a job they hated, pondering leaving a job to chase their dreams, and retiring from work. This means the characters’ dreams and desires were heavily explored and I’m always interested in discussions about reconciling your dreams and creativity with your need for survival in this capitalist world. And though I don’t agree with all the book had to say about this, I enjoyed reading it and I got some advice I might consider applying to my life as a creative.

Another thing I liked was that the books the librarian recommended were unconventional and unexpected. They weren’t novels with characters going through the same thing as the protagonist of the chapter and neither were they nonfiction books that would give them the specific answers they needed to hear. The books recommended were a children’s picture book, a book about gardening and worms, another about astrology and the energy of the sun and moon, a book filled with pictures of different species of birds, and a poetry collection. At the end of the day, each character drew their own conclusion from the book, exploring it through their individual lens and taking with them what they needed. 

However, I have to add that it was extremely unsettling how Sayuri, the librarian, was constantly described by her weight, or it was pointed out with exaggerated reactions from narrators of almost each chapter. I found that really weird. Also, according to the blurb, it implies that the librarian has a magical gift of reading minds, but the book never didn’t hint that (or maybe I didn’t notice it) and because the reader never sees things from the librarian’s perspective, we can’t conclude that she read minds and have to believe her when she says her recommendations, which always hit the spot, are coincidental.

All in all, this was a short and easy read that I enjoyed.

You should read it if you enjoyed Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, like books about books, or are looking for a book to inspire and give you hope for your dreams and goals in life

Quotes I liked from the book:

Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening

In a world where you don’t know what will happen next, I just do what I can right now.

Non-fiction recommendations

Here are some non-fiction books I’ve read and recommend:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

  Published October 2018 ⬝ 319 pages ⬝ Nonfiction, Self-help, Psychology, Personal development

  I know it’s self-help but I enjoyed what it offers and if I had to recommend a self-help book, it’d be this. I learned about habit stacking from here and it’s been working for me plus I liked that at the end of each chapter the author gives a summary.

• How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

  Published March 2023 ⬝ 352 pages ⬝ Memoir, Nonfiction, Rastafarian Culture, Feminism

  This memoir was written as creative nonfiction and the author narrates true-life incidents using literary techniques found in fiction such as dialogue, setting, scenes, etc. Plus the author is a poet so the writing was so beautiful and I learned a lot about Rastafarian culture that I previously had absolutely no idea about. I went through it quickly because it read like fiction and was so captivating.

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

  Published May 1994 ⬝ 352 pages ⬝ Memoir, Nonfiction, Writing, Essays

  This was the first book I’ve read about writing.

• The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

  Published May 2020 ⬝ 320 pages ⬝ Nonfiction, History, Politics, War

Currently Reading: Others Were Emeralds by Lang Leav

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That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed this edition. I would love to hear from you so talk to me in the comments or by replying to this email:

❁ What kind of reading month was it for you?

❁ What’s your relationship with non-fiction? Do you have any recommendations?

❁ What’s the last book you read and loved?

❁ What are you currently reading or excited to read soon?

May October be filled with joyful moments for you and may you be aware of them and fully immerse yourself in these moments ✨ Bye <3