Six Recs For Non Fiction November

As nonfiction November comes to a close, Brett picks six nonfiction titles from his stack this year that were particularly excellent that you can add to yours! As always all the books are avail on my bookshop.org page listed below. 

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Transcript

Brett Benner: 0:00

Hey everybody, I hope you're having a great week. We went this afternoon to see Wicked, which, I feel like is the, the movie of the moment. You can't go into social media without seeing 7, 000 memes and clips and videos of people singing Defying Gravity. So, there's no way to avoid it, but I have to say, I thought the movie was just fantastic. I'm not a huge Wicked fan of, I should say, not a huge fan of the stage show. I do like some of the songs, but I thought that the movie was a huge improvement. They really fleshed out the book. They made things make a lot more sense. I felt, That it just overall, it just was a great experience. That's beautiful to look at. The two women are fantastic. The whole cast is great. I would be interested to see how many of you have watched it or what you thought of it, but I, I, I loved it. So, here we are at the end of November, at the end of non fiction November, to be more clear. And I thought about it, and I thought, you know what, I haven't even really given some good recommendations of what I think is great. So, that's what this, episode is about. I've went through everything I've read so far this year. I picked six books out that I thought were particular standouts in the nonfiction area. And so I'm going to share those with you today. Now, if you're following me on my YouTube page, most of these are not going to be a surprise, because I've talked about them before, but if you're new to this, Podcast, or if you're just new to me, then all of these will be new. So let's not waste any time and talk about them. So before we get into the books, I wanted to talk really briefly on some adaptions that I've seen on television and the movie theaters of books that I think are worth noting and really interesting. The first one is the film Conclave, which is based on the book by Robert Harris. This was fantastic. I saw it last week and it stars Ray Fines, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, and it is About electing the next pope. And the twist and turns and the mysteries that come up. It is really fantastic with an ending. I never saw coming. interestingly, I started stanley Tucci's new book, What I Ate in One Year, and the whole first part of the book is filming this movie and living in Italy. And so it kind of is a great little companion piece. The book is great beyond that. It's as good if you liked Stanley Tucci's first book or enjoyed his television series, you'll love this and, uh, it's, it's really great. So that's the first, the second is this has been out the second season just finished. And somehow I, I came late to the game, which is strange because I was waiting for this to come out and, just never jumped when it first was released. And that is Min Jin Lee's, Pachinko, the adaption of that book. It is breathtakingly beautiful. It's on Apple TV plus. And, if you don't have Apple TV plus, I would even say, you know, get a one month trial or something like that. Cause you can probably get it for cheap and just binge it and then quit. Although Apple TV plus has a lot of great shows, including my show shrinking shameless plug, but, uh, it is. Fantastic. A beautiful adaption. Every single episode is like a movie. The cinematography, the acting is fantastic. Most of the cast I've never even seen. So I would highly recommend that. And the last one that I watched half of the first episode last night, and it's really good, is Interior Chinatown based on the book by Charles Yu, who also adapted, the book for television as a series. Really wonderful cast. I never would have anticipated how they would have adapted this book, but it's kind of ingenious and, really funny, really, really smart. So I would highly recommend that as well. Okay, so on to the books, I have 6 books to share with you today. These are all books that I read this year. 2 of them are backlist. and the other 4 have been released this year. The 1st, 1 speaking of adaptions, I'd had the book forever, but what really prompted me to finally pick it up was when it was on the New York Times, 100 best books of the last century that kind of pushed it over the edge for me that and the fact that I knew that it had been adapted. to be a series, and I wanted to read it before the series came out. Well, the series is now out. It is on FX or Hulu. It is fantastic, but the book is as well. It is called Say Nothing, a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. Patrick Radden Some of you may know because he wrote this incredible book called Empire of Pain, which is about the Sacklers and the opioid epidemic that has stricken America. This he wrote before that, and it is about the origins of the IRA and the troubles in Ireland, which the book starts with. A mother of nine children being taken from her home. And that kind of propels the story, but it's not clearly just about that. It's really the, the players and the people that were integral into the beginnings of the IRA and what has happened really, fantastic piece of investigative journalism. I don't want to say Too much because I don't want to give anything away but I will also add if you read the book be sure to check out the Adaption as well because it's it's exceptional and again great cast. Okay next get the picture by Bianca Bosker if you told me earlier in the year that I was gonna read a book about art and artists and Absolutely love it and find it hysterically funny. I would have said you were crazy. But here we are So Bianca Bosker Is a journalist who her first book was called cork dork, which was, her foray into the world of wine. She immerses herself in her world, much like a method actor would do into a role. And for this, she. Descends into the art world. It is so good. You guys, first of all, truth is stranger than fiction. The people that she comes across and that she works with and meets are beyond colorful and memorable from artists and gallery owners and art collectors. There is a sequence in here with a performance artist who is beginning to get into OnlyFans. I don't want to say too much, but I will tell you that Bianca Bosker is brave in ways I cannot even imagine and puts herself into situations that are so crazy. It's also, though, a really interesting examination of art and the art world and who are the arbiters of what gets decided in terms of what should be looked at as art and what should be considered a value and who gets excluded from that world. It's really, really fantastic, really entertaining. I found myself as I was reading it, tabbing so much of it and then looking up all these people that she was talking about especially these, you know, certainly these artists, but these gallery owners and some of these collectors. It's really a great book and it would be a fantastic gift for someone as well. Not that any of these wouldn't, but, but this one in particular, it's just, it's great. Next up is There's Always This Year on Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib. I think that Hanif is a gift to all of us. A few years ago, he wrote a book called A Little Devil in America, which is fantastic. It's a series of essays about art and artists. And in this new book, he uses basketball as kind of the springboard, no pun intended, to get into the subjects of his essays. You don't have to be a basketball player to appreciate it. I think that would give you an extra edge. I certainly am not a basketball person. And so some of this stuff was a little lost on me, but again, those reflections on basketball lead you to a deeper and heartfelt discussion about something else that he's getting at, whether it's a race or. Relationships or, racism or survival, first and foremost, I think he would call himself a poet and it is evident in everything he does and the way he writes. I would also recommend listening to him. On audio, whether it's this book or one of his other ones, I find I like to listen to him and read along. He has an incredible voice, the way that he speaks and the way that he phrases his sentences. There's just like nobody else. And so for me, every time he publishes a book, it's like a celebration. Um, I can't speak more highly about this. I think he's incredible. I can't say that I liked this more than A Little Devil in America. I liked that a little bit more. But still, it's just So speaking of golden, this next author has been around, this is another backlist title. I've been really lucky this year to go through his whole, canon of work, which right now there's just three books. This is his second book and it is nonfiction obviously because that's what we're talking about But it's Alexander Chee his first book Edinburgh completely blew me away First of all, the writing is bar none. It's, it's so beautiful and so eloquent and I'm literally at a loss for words when I speak about it. It's a devastating, but incredible coming of age story. That Reminded me a little bit of Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, but, but not quite that devastating. Uh, that was next level, but there were certain elements of it that, reminded me of that. This

10:44

Is

Brett Benner: 10:45

a series of essays on a myriad of subjects. I just thought this thing was so extraordinary. A lot of these essays deal with identity and for him, it's being gay and being Korean, um, finding your place in the world, especially finding your place as an artist and finding his way as a writer, some of the genesis of what becomes the novel Edinburgh, is in this book. He, is one of my favorite writers. He will always be a go to for me. He is truly, truly, truly special and, I thought this was just extraordinary. So get it. All right. Next up is Seen Through, a chronicle of sex, drugs, and opera by Ricky Ian Gordon. This was a total surprise to me. I didn't know really anything about Ricky Ian Gordon. I was intrigued by the cover, quite frankly, which is this really cool pink cover with the author's face coming through these lines, but I, all I knew is he wrote opera and musical theater and that he had some sort of relationship with Stephen Sondheim, which I didn't know the extent about. So I was curious. Well I was completely floored by this thing. Ricky Ian Gordon is just brilliant. And it, to me, is such an incredible example of an artist at work and how he works. The way that he describes music, the way that he describes How he comprehends music and how it affects him is so beautiful and interesting. There's a sequence in here when he talks about Joni Mitchell and what she means to him that is such an incredible tribute. And of course, he talks about Stephen Sondheim later, which is its own interesting thing, but the very first part of the book is all about growing up in his childhood. And then. Going into adulthood, it's also a lot about him as a person dealing with, living and loving through the AIDS epidemic and that kind of effect and what that did to him, but also. just getting to have the privilege of reading about someone and how they create something as amazing as music. It's really, really, really special. And I found myself not familiar with any of his stuff. So I took out my Spotify and as I was going through and he was talking about specific pieces or a specific singer, I would pull it up and listen to it, which was really Great. It all became like this multimedia experience. So if you want a really wonderful book that gets into the mind, the creative mind of Someone in the musical theater and opera world, absolutely get this book. Fantastic. And then the final book that I wanted to discuss Again, total surprise, and one of my favorite covers and, titles of the year is Man Boobs, a memoir of musicals Visas, Hope, and Cake by Kamel Adjizoun. I was lucky enough when I was doing the Gaze Reading Podcast to have sat down with because after reading his book, I loved him so much that I wanted to talk to him. And I, I think that's always the sign of a great book is when you go through something and you feel like you've connected with the person and you want nothing more than to connect with them a little more. And he's so wonderful and so lovely and just bright and has such a great sense of humor. This is his story about. Being a young Pakistani gay man who comes to America and is wanting to get his green card, studies in America, but it's about living between two cultures. It's about, sexuality, but it's also about his weight and, wanting to lose weight and also always being. Overweight. And so how he dealt with that. It is uproariously funny. I had a galley before, which if I had it now, I would show you I had marked so many passages because I would find myself laughing so much. I was reading this out loud to my husband in the car at times because I was like, you have to hear this. I'm sure it was driving him crazy, but he has such an incredible sense of humor and it really is a delight. So that's it. Six really wonderful books, nonfiction choices for you for nonfiction November and beyond. All of these are compelling. All of these are incredibly easy to get into for any of you who say, well, I don't really like nonfiction because I can't get into it. I promise you, you're not going to have that problem here. They're all great. So have a great rest of your week for those of you who are celebrating Thanksgiving. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and I will see you all next week.