Nonfiction and Hobby Book Ideas for the Holidays And for even more ideas, check out my past book gift More Book Gifts for Kids and Teens 01 Games of Deception by Andrew Maraniss In Maraniss's nonfiction

This 1000-page fantasy novel is intense, brutal (significant trigger warnings are warranted), extremely dark, and not at all a universal recommendation. I struggled with and was also fascinated by the fact that in its original form, the story was Harry Potter fan fiction about Hermione and Draco. The structure and timeline is intriguing and illuminating. This beast of a fantasy novel (it's 1040 pages) tracks a healer and alchemist suffering from significant memory gaps through three periods of time in her life. When we meet Helena Marino in medias res, she is a prisoner. All of her fellow Resistance members have been captured or killed, and Helena is being treated cruelly largely by a staff of animated undead, directed by evil masterminds. On paper, Helena is a figure of little importance, but the obvious and deliberate tampering with her memories of the final months of the Resistance has led many to believe that she was an essential part of their fight--and that accessing her memories may be the key to understanding the entire Resistance system. But Kaine Ferron, a dark necromancer who is attempting to release her memories, turns out to be a key part of Helena's past, and the book eventually begins to illuminate their complicated enemy/friend/destroyer/savior history. The heart of this story was originally a work titled Manacled , and it was dark Harry Potter fan fiction about Hermione, who had an Order secret buried in her mind, and Draco, tasked by Voldemort with unearthing it. I didn't recall this when I first began the book, and I developed complex feelings about this premise and its implications. This begins as a dark, dark novel. The setting is literally dark, and more importantly, Helena is imprisoned, confused, grieving those she lost, and reeling from the trauma of the stasis in which she was conscious but unmoving, unspeaking, and unacknowledged for many months. She continues to be imprisoned, fully reliant on her captors, and discussed and treated as an owned object. Her body and mind are used to her enemy's desired ends. Rape, forced entry into her brain, and practical starvation are all part of her life. This was brutal text to dive into, and reading about her mental and sexual violation for significant page time in SenLinYu's novel almost sent me packing. But if you can steel yourself to continue, you might find the structure fascinating, as I did. The cruelty is real, and tough to take, but when, after the first grim, nerve-racking section ends, we skip back in time to read the origin story of Helena and Kaine, we find an unlikely love story built within a time of upheaval; trust overshadowing secrets and deception; and an opposites-attract scenario that serves as ballast for the novel. Context doesn't erase the horrors that we read about initially, but it softens some of the blows after the fact. An eventual second skip in time in the book follows chronologically from the first section, so it picks up the story and explores what happens to all surviving characters in the end. Mental images of Hermione and Draco slipped in and out of my mind as I read the book, causing uncomfortable feelings that were at times difficult to sit with yet, admittedly, fascinating. This is not a universal recommendation because of the shocking abuse (and the novel's significant length), but fantasy die-hards might want to test their mettle with this read. I listened to Alchemised as a library audiobook (it was over 36 hours long), narrated by the fantastic Saskia Maarleveld, through Libby. More Dark Fantasy Novels Alchemised  is SenLinYu's first published novel. The intense darkness and necromancy of this novel reminded me at times of Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb series; Gideon the Ninth is the first book, followed by Harrow the Ninth , Nona the Ninth , and the future publication Alecto the Ninth .

We read an array of types of books--often lighter titles in the summer, a nonfiction doorstop in the

fascinating historical fiction stories; an unorthodox friendship story about the meaning of life; and nonfiction Filled with sometimes playful, sometimes weighty questions, scenarios, and ideas, How to Be Perfect is nonfiction

Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine's expansion of the 1619 Project into a full-length nonfiction

Libby Steadman lives in Virginia on the edge of the Confederate-Union Civil War conflict.  For more nonfiction titles that focus on race, please click here . 06 Buckeye by Patrick Ryan Patrick

Sullivan (author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky); I'm listening to wonderful, smart, entertaining Bill Bryson's nonfiction

Here are my six favorite reads of the past month, which include contemporary fiction, suspense, nonfiction 1619 Project highlights tragic, uncomfortable aspects of our nation's history in an important work of nonfiction

Where Are You, Sally Rooney's newest triumph; Isabel Wilkerson's disturbing, fascinating, and important nonfiction by Isabel Wilkerson Caste is consistently powerful, profound, disturbing, and absolutely necessary nonfiction

To read other Bossy fiction and nonfiction reviews on the site of books that address issues of race,

If you love books set in Ireland, you might try Patrick Radden Keefe's powerful nonfiction Say Anything

Gilbert is a lovely writer who authored the very interesting nonfiction book Last American Man and the

ultimately be able to read it, but I wanted to find out how McCurdy's significant command of narrative nonfiction

Nonfiction and Hobby Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays Shhh!

in a fiction series I think they'd like, typically I give my own kids and the other kids in my life nonfiction I feel as though nonfiction topics can either be easily targeted toward a kid's known interests or just

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander In this beautiful nonfiction

Australian outback at the end of the 19th century, Only Killers and Thieves centers around one family’s conflicts Doc is nonfiction, but it reads like historical fiction (as opposed to a heavier nonfiction title like

I've got historical fiction/fantasy, royal historical fiction, and a compelling nonfiction story that

mother's in jail, his stepfather is gone, and his best friend and most solid source of advice is a convicted is also the author of All Our Shimmering Skies and By Sea & Stars: The Story of the First Fleet, a nonfiction

But these four fiction works and two nonfiction titles have especially resonated with me since I read is a sweeping generational story of hardship, sacrifice, and fifty years of Korean-Japanese cultural conflict

good friends with Glennon Doyle, mentioned above) to be a really lovely writer, as in the case of the nonfiction

a young woman and her quest for musical stardom (and romantic fulfillment); Barbara Brown Taylor's nonfiction

I already offer many of my fiction and nonfiction book recommendations through this blog.

Here are the six books I most loved reading this past month: a beautiful, poignant nonfiction book about

science fiction, young adult LGBTQ+ fiction, memoir, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and nonfiction

her late grandma Bobby, a formidable and irresistible character; The Body by Bill Bryson, fascinating nonfiction reemerge in Sitara's memories and her subconscious, and she explores Sitara's complicated, ongoing, conflicting

two new novels from favorite authors who each include interconnected characters in their stories; one nonfiction

Greedy Reading Lists I posted in 2020: Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved This Year Six of the Best Nonfiction This book was listed in the Greedy Reading List Six of the Best Nonfiction Books I've Read This Year.

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander In this beautiful nonfiction

This book was listed in the Greedy Reading List Six of the Best Nonfiction Books I've Read This Year. Greedy Reading Lists I posted this year: Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved This Year Six of the Best Nonfiction

quests for knowledge and cures, attempts to locate a species of dragon, and a large-scale, high-stakes conflict high-stakes battle is coming, and she'll need to find out what she's made of in the life-and-death conflict I also liked the increased focus on large-scale conflict and strategies, the search for knowledge (about I'm in this story for the teamwork, vengeance, friendship, quests, danger, strategy, character conflict The ending leaves us on another cliffhanger and sets up potentially intriguing, mysterious conflicts

dresses as a boy to explore scientific pursuits, and the palace intrigue that occurs when their allies conflict for more behind-the-scenes peeks at Shakespeare's shows, and I was least interested in the political conflicts and drama, although they were essential to the conflict of the book.

He hadn't yet become the convicted criminal of his adulthood. The pacing is slow, and the book is largely made up of various characters talking about conflicting memories

Centuries-old resentments and conflicts threaten to bubble up into war--and Nahri and Dara's arrival only serves to feed the flames of conflict. mythology, magic, and battles--but I'm not sure I fully grasped the intricacies of the political histories, conflicts

various characters that illuminate the mysterious breakup as well as the characters' complexities, love, conflict meteoric rise of a 1970s band, their mesmerizing lead singer Daisy, the group's complicated interpersonal conflicts

built and the background established, I was hooked on the interpersonal relationships, the dramatic conflicts me, bogged down by explanations of how Aaron's imagined world works and the basic history of various conflicts

Pylväinen's novel explores the cooperation and conflict among cultures in a mid-nineteenth century community Their cultures are sometimes mysteries to each other, and at times conflict greatly with others' traditions Religion is a particular conflict in the novel, with the Christian characters proving themselves to be

Nikki Erlick explores grief, loss, family conflicts, strangers' bonds, and sticky moral dilemmas related Poppy Fields's founder delves into moral dilemmas while also--in a realistic successful-scientist's conflict

But Carl is a convicted murderer who was released from jail because he's so gravely ill and close to Carl is a dying man who's seemingly been wrongly convicted of murder, and if Joe and Lila can just prove

class division, segregation, selective breeding, and eugenics are at the heart of this story and its conflicts present in the novel, but the characters, the plot, the details, the worldbuilding, the overarching conflict

other states across the country, has been swept by a secession movement, but Jess and Storey assume the conflicts The friends soon realize that conflicting political ideologies have led to this horror here and elsewhere

hubbub) illustrate the generations of patterns, expectations, claustrophobic rules, and long-simmering conflicts These complicated matters are at the heart of the instigating conflict in the novel.

Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees explores past Turkish-Greek conflicts in a small island community The fig tree shares the story of the young lovers and while exploring the conflicts between Turkish and

Centuries-old resentments and conflicts threaten to bubble up into war--and Nahri and Dara's arrival only serves to feed the flames of conflict.

India, and how a tiny bit of empathy might have unraveled the increasingly devastating whirlwind of conflict But their cemented roles in the escalating the conflict ensure that the situation comes to a disastrous

dresses as a boy to explore scientific pursuits, and the palace intrigue that occurs when their allies conflict for more behind-the-scenes peeks at Shakespeare's shows, and I was least interested in the political conflicts and drama, although they were essential to the conflict of the book. extensive forays into the country's traditions, political interests, and its royal family's interpersonal conflicts

the Summer, she offers up an irresistible rom-com premise with weighty, messy, real-life-imperfect conflicts The conflicts that repeatedly keep Emma and Justin from their happy-ever-after feel plausibly limiting

mother's in jail, his stepfather is gone, and his best friend and most solid source of advice is a convicted It centers around one family’s conflicts with crooked and powerful neighbors; cruel and aggressive Native

with a beautiful, spunky local young woman, Lo Bailey, who was later accused of his murder but never convicted

satisfying whirlwind, George and Frankie's romantic confusion, familial involvement, emotional health, conflicting