Politics and war, science and sports, memoir and biography — there's a great big world of nonfiction books out there just waiting to be read. We picked the 100 best and most influential written in English since 1923, the beginning of TIME ... magazine
As an American expat in France, Baldwin found literary success with his debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, in 1953. But it was his first nonfiction book, published two years later, that cemented his reputation as a cultural seer: the essay collection Notes of a Native Son, which explored race relations, African-American identity and literature in America and Europe. The book’s title invoked Richard Wright’s Native Son, and in its most famous essay, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Baldwin skewers the elder writer’s book, claiming that it put a political agenda above heart and literary merit. (Baldwin took Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin to task for similar reasons.) Baldwin’s polemic ended his once friendly relationship with Wright; Notes of a Native Son endures as his defining work, and his greatest.
“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” It might be the greatest single piece of advice for a budding author — and it’s right on this book’s inside jacket flap. You’re advised to read the rest of the slim tome, though, because it’s the most practical and unpretentious writer’s manual around — as practical and unpretentious as its author, who, yes, just happens to be one of the world’s most famous novelists. What does he have to say? “Read a lot, write a lot,” don’t dress up the vocabulary unnecessarily, and never come “lightly to the blank page.” The 300-page book’s first third is as close to a memoir as King is likely to get, and the last section is a clear-eyed account of the 1999 car accident that almost killed him. But it’s the middle that will serve writers for generations.
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Melissa
Reblogged this on Swamp of Boredom and commented:
I’m reblogging this for my own reference and also to share with my readers (all 34 of you;)). Since the release of the 1001 Books App on Tuesday, I’ve been book list crazy. Since I like non-fiction – especially non-fiction centered on historical events and people, not so much current people – and have read a couple of excellent non-fiction books in the last year (Only Yesterday, Empire of the Summer Moon) I wondered if there was a list of recommended non-fiction books. Of course there is. I found one from the Guardain (UK) that is, obviously, geared towards British readers and that, unlike Time’s list, encompasses all non-fiction ever written. This list from Time consists of books only since Time began publishing, 1923. There are a few that don’t interest me at all and the biography choices focus too heavily on women and African Americans, IMO, but overall the list is excellent.
Enjoy!
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages