The Sunday Salon - Book Coveting

Hello everyone. Today the Sunday Salon will meet Debi's mini-challenge for the Dewey's Books Challenge. Let me explain: Like me, Debi was a big fan of Dewey's Sunday Book Coveting posts, so she's inviting everyone to write book coveting posts of their own during the month of May as a tribute to Dewey.

Lately I've been really excited about non-fiction. This is not something I remember ever happening before. But I'm currently reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, and it's one of my top reads of the year so far - I love it so much I've been neglecting my (also awesome) current fiction book. And I also started Feeling Like a Kid by Jerry Griswold, which was a random library find. It's a slim and gorgeous little book about how some of the most successful children's books capture the feeling of being a child. Furthermore, I found myself entertaining thoughts of having a non-fiction month so I could get to all these non-fiction books I've been dying to read. It's not likely to happen, because I do need stories. But a non-fiction and comics month? Now there's a thought.

Anyway, because of my newfound enthusiasm, I thought I'd tell you about some non-fiction books I've been coveting:

• The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings is, as you can tell by the title, about the history of the English language. Specifically, it's about the history of its vocabulary: how foreign words entered the language, what this means in cultural terms, etc. I'm a proud linguistics geek, so it's no wonder I'm dying to read this. But from what I hear, the book is very accessible even if you'd had no contact with the topic before.
  
  
• Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar is about children's literature: why children love stories, the cognitive benefits of reading, the role of horror in children's books, etc. It uses examples from Narnia, His Dark Materials and Harry Potter, which makes me even more excited to read it. I've just finished Maria Tatar's The Hard Facts of the Grimm's Fairy Tales (which I can't wait to tell you about), and I think I have a little bit of a brain crush on her. Also, Neil Gaiman praised this book, and his recommendations have led me to countless wonderful books before.
  

• I May be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination by Francis Spufford. By the author of The Child that Books Built, this is a book about the hold that journeys to the icy end of the world have had on the English imagination. He analyses the writings of Mary Shelly, Byron and Coleridge, among others, as well as journals of actual polar explorers, to get to the bottom of what's behind this obsession.


• The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA by Mark Schultz, Zander Cannon, and Kevin Cannon. The title says it all: it's a comic about genetics and DNA. Science in graphic format! How can I resist? The Stuff of Life has received a lot of praise. I hear that the science is made accessible but not at all dumbed down. Sounds like my kind of book.
  
  
• Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank. An analysis of the history of the concept of virginity, its cultural meaning, the ways it which it has been used. I can't remember how I first heard of this book, but I know that shortly after I added it to my wishlist, Jenny reviewed it and made me want to read it even more. On a similar note, Heather recently reviewed The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti, which sounds just as fascinating.
  
  
• This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff. This is a memoir about Wolff's childhood in the 1950s and his travels throughout the United States with his mother. I'm not always drawn to memoirs, but Nick Hornby included it in his Writer's Table, so how can I resist? Besides, any author who sings with John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats (and one of my favourite songs too!) is an author I most definitely should be reading.
  
  
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. I've been meaning to read something by Joan Didion for quite some time, and this collection of essays about what was happening in California in 1968 sounds like something I'd really enjoy.
  
  
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. For some reason, it was only recently that I first of this classic. Published in 1962, Silent Spring was largely responsible for creating public awareness of the consequences of the destruction of wildlife, and it inspired many of the environmental movements we know today.

There. And since we're on non-fiction, now seems like a good time to join Trish's Non-Fiction Five challenge. The goal is to read to read five non-fiction books between May and September. I'm not going to make a list, but this post should give you an idea of what I'd like to read. But we'll see where my reading mood takes me.

What about you? Which books, fiction or non-fiction, have you been coveting lately? Have you read any of the ones I listed? What did you think?