November is bountiful with outstanding nonfiction! Celebrities, cookbooks, poetry and essays lead the pack.
Bono, the lead singer of the legendary band U2, reflects on his remarkable life through 40 chapters named after U2 songs in Surrender; Matthew Perry takes readers behind the scenes of “Friends” and talks candidly about his struggle with addiction in Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing; Patti Smith presents 365 arresting images in the visual scrapbook A Book of Days; Steve Martin looks back at his most popular films through artwork by New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss in Number One Is Walking; “Fixer Upper” star Joanna Gaines reassesses her life in the authentic and vulnerable The Stories We Tell; and comedian and TV star Rob Delaney talks about grief following the death of his young son in the visceral A Heart That Works.
World-renowned chef René Redzepi sets a new standard for how we think about food in the gorgeously unconventional cookbook Noma 2.0; Nadia Caterina Munno, aka TikTok’s The Pasta Queen, presents 100% authentic Italian recipes; Deb Perelman collects essential recipes for meals you’ll make again and again in Smitten Kitchen Keepers; Bill, Judy, Sarah, and Kaitlin Leung adapt homestyle but restaurant quality family recipes in their first book The Woks of Life; Christina Tosi, founder of the Milk Bar bakery chain and host of Netflix’s “Bake Squad” shares recipes and inspiration for delectable treats in All About Cookies; “Great British Baking Show” finalist Ruby Tandoh focuses on inclusivity and accessibility in her inspiring new book Cook As You Are; and Claire Saffitz’s love letter to all things sweet will delight bakers in What’s For Dessert.
Kate Baer has established herself as one of the greatest female poets of our time with her first collection What Kind of Woman and will continue to do so with And Yet; Harumi Murakami looks at writing and creativity in the charming and idiosyncratic Novelist as a Vocation; celebrated filmmaker Quentin Tarantino takes a rollicking look at key American films from the 1970s in his first work of nonfiction, Cinema Speculation; sisters Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar reunite with hilarious and absurd anecdotes in The World Record Book of Racist Stories; Nick Hornby explores the similarities between a Victorian novelist and a contemporary American rock star in Dickens & Prince; Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jerry Saltz delivers a survey of the art world through 80 provocative essays in Art is Life; Franny Choi considers the apocalyptic nature of our time in her third poetry collection The World Keeps Ending, and the World Keeps Going On; Seattle-born Robin Pecknold takes an intimate look at the lyrics of 56 songs from his beloved band Fleet Foxes in Wading in Waist-High Water; and 50 poems celebrate the life of three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo in Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism through the presidencies of JFK, LBJ and Nixon in Silent Spring Revolution and Kerri K. Greenidge sheds light on a pair of 19th century Quaker sisters whose legacy as abolitionists is more complex than history books suggest in The Grimkes. Two tales of true crime with ties to Seattle but with national implications are in the mix: Gregg Olson tells the story of Stella Nickel, an Auburn woman who was the first person convicted under federal product tampering laws after killing her husband with cyanide-laced pills in American Mother; and Edward Humes examines the murder of two young Canadians on a road trip to Seattle, and the 31-year hunt for the killer which was solved using DNA uploaded to an ancestry database – the first trial of its kind – in The Forever Witness.
And don’t forget to check out the nonfiction joining Peak Picks in November!
~posted by Frank B.
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