Nonfiction November

Just as with fiction, I enjoy the variety found in nonfiction reading. I inherited a love of history from my father, so I often find myself reading historical accounts. I’m also intrigued by personality profiles. As an INFJ, I tend to be very introspective, so self-help books also lure me in. I love reading about people—their lives, their choices, their loves, their losses. Today I’m sharing some of my favorite nonfiction reads.

Historial Nonfiction

• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

• Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Memoir

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

• Becoming by Michelle Obama

• I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler's List Survivor by Laura Hillman

Self Improvement

• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

• The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner

• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

I still have quite a few nonfiction picks on my to-read list, including:

• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice & Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

• Hunger by Roxane Gay

• Know My Name by Chanel Miller

What nonfiction books are on your favorites list?

Reading Aloud Can Help

How often do you read aloud? As an adult, it’s probably not very often, unless you have small children like mine, who want to hear Go, Dog, Go every day. This type of reading isn’t very intellectually stimulating, but apparently it’s good for our brains anyway. An interesting article by Sophie Hardach was posted this week on BBC Future. It highlights several reasons to start reading aloud regularly. (Read the article in full here.) Reading aloud helps you process and remember what you’ve read, but there are other benefits as well.

When you’re writing or editing a piece, reading it aloud is an important step in the process. It’s common for writers to know what they’re trying to say, so when they read silently, they tend to fill in the blanks with what they expect to read. Slowing down and reading a text aloud will highlight missing or added words, awkward phrasing, typos, and incomplete or run-on sentences.

Reading the text aloud will help you see the mistake you might otherwise miss. Mistakenly repeated words are commonly found on line or page breaks, as shown in this example.

So next time you’re finishing a draft, take the time to read it aloud. You might be surprised by what you find.