hi guys today I want to recommend to you
some easy to read nonfiction so I like
to read nonfiction I talk about
nonfiction on my channel and I have a
whole playlist of non-fiction videos if
you want to check those out and
something that people say a lot of the
time to me is that they are finding it
difficult to get into nonfiction, I'm a
little bit daunted by it, and it's just
not a part of their everyday reading and
I think from my own experience is that
when nonfiction becomes part of
your everyday reading it gets a lot easier and it becomes as natural as
reading fiction but I totally appreciate
that feeling when you haven't read much
nonfiction perhaps haven't read any nonfiction at all and just not knowing
where to start and some nonfiction is
incredibly dense so if you start with the wrong thing it can be very
off-putting so I thought I would collect together a
few recommendations of different
nonfiction books on a variety of topics
I think are easy reading they're all books I enjoy as well there are other
nonfiction books I've read that I would consider easy reading but didn't
necessarily love these are books I both
recommend as excellent pieces of
literature and also as accessible
nonfiction so without further ado let's
get into the books so my first two recommendations come with a bit of
general advice as well and that is to try nonfiction audiobooks now of course
this is similar to reading nonfiction if
it's an incredibly dense book it's not
necessarily going to be accessible on an audiobook any more there than it is in
physical book however there are a few non-fiction books out there particularly
ones that are read by the author that have an
element of memoir to them that I just
think make for fantastic ins to
nonfiction they're very accessible the
author really brings them to life in in those audiobooks and two of those I want
to recommend to you here the first one
is the art of asking by Amanda Palmer
now I actually read this book partially in
physical copy and partially on the audio
book I had both and I kind of flitted
between them both but I will say that Amanda Palmer does a fantastic job of narrating
this audiobook and this is one of these books I would never have picked up if it
was not for pressure from my friends and
people I trusted this book is all about
Amanda Palmer's life her journey to
become the musician and public figure
that she is now
it follows her journey in the creative
world in the arts experimenting with different art forms she spent a lot of
her time when she was younger
performing in street art and kind of
busking and performing as a living
statue and it's all about her journey to
becoming a creative person and finding who
she is as a creative person but it is
also advice like it is a book full of advice is a book of encouragement is a
book that encourages you to pursue your dreams to go for what you want and most
importantly to ask for help from others
to not feel like your creative endeavors
have to be a solo pursuit that is quite
isolating but instead to ask for help when you need it and to take advantage
of help that people are offering you and
I think if you're feeling a little bit low or uninspired or need a little bit
of a push to really embrace and the
things that you love in your life
whether they are creative arts like music or not this book will do that for
you and it's just a wonderful wonderful
reading or listening experience and of
course incredibly accessible the second
nonfiction book that I would really recommend to listen to an audiobook is
the genger games by Juno Dawson so this
one again is partially memoir it's
Juno Dawson's journey as a trans women
coming out and transitioning and her
experiences throughout her life at the
different stages on this journey but
it's also a sort of introduction to
gender to trans inclusive feminism to
trans issues um and its its Wonderfully
wonderfully done that those might sound like quite dense topics they might sound
like quite daunting topics but general
speaking is just incredibly clear and
engaging and I think that element of memoir that element of autobiography
that you get by hearing her story and
her discussing these heavier issues
within the context of her life makes it
that much more accessible and listening
to the audiobook which is narrated by
Juno Dawson I think makes it a little bit
more like a conversation it's like listening to somebody talk to you as
opposed to reading a dense academic text
and it just think it's a really
accessible book into this topic and a really important book so regardless of
whether you are deep into nonfiction or not I think this is definitely one for
everybody I did say I might to cover a broad range of books in this video so
the next book I want to recommend is
actually a history book or a historical
receptions book it's about a lot of
things and that is confronting the
classics by mary beard now I hope with
all of these books that they are books
you can come to without any prior
knowledge of the subject within their
pages and I hope that's true of confronting
the classics but I have to confess I read it when I already had a classics
degree so it's always a little bit
difficult for me to judge but I would say
overall that out of all of the ancient history books I've read
this is one of the most accessible in this book mary beard isn't just
telling you the history of ancient Greece and ancient Rome she's talking
about why classics is relevant to
today she's talking about the study of
classics how that's developed over time
and giving you a really broad broad
overview of the subject area in multiple
different ways and it felt very similar
to some of my first-year lectures at
university and I started my first year
at university doing classics not having
done classics before so I think of
that as being quite an accessible but
in-depth level of historical study and I
definitely think this is a great great
piece of literature if you're at all
interested in
antiquity and classics and I think a
very accessible one at that my next two
books are actually really short little
books which also I think helps when it comes to the daunting task that is
reading your first non-fiction books and those are both of Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie's books we have her first one we
should all be feminists and then a book that came out a little bit later on
similar topic called Dear Ijeawele or
a feminist manifesto in 15 suggestions
as you can tell from the titles of these
they are both on the topic of feminism
and they are very very introductory they
may be too introductory for some of you but because of how introductory they are
they are incredibly accessible
nonfiction I don't think it matters what age you are you can read these and
I also think even if you are already
familiar with feminism they just sort of reinforce those basic principles and
Dear Ijeawele is slightly more built
upon version of we should all be
feminists so perhaps this one is more for
those of you to think you might be past
this but something else you can look for a
nonfiction is young adult nonfiction this is a thing and it's a thing I hope
continues to grow because I think
marketing nonfiction books at younger
audiences is so important and when I
was a kid I felt like there was a lot of children's nonfiction but I don't remember
there being a lot of nonfiction aimed at
teenagers or young adults and just
because this is piece of young adult
fiction as well does not mean you can't
read as an adult as well one piece of
young adult nonfiction I'd really like
to recommend to you is this book is
gay by Juno Dawson again Juno Dawson's books are accessible what
can I say they're also great this is her
other non-fiction book which is aimed at a
slightly younger audience but can
certainly be read by everybody and it is
all about sexuality in all of its many
glorious forms and sex and it is a
no-holds-barred
non patronizing discussion
of sex and sexuality in a really really
positive way and I just think that we
need more books like that I wish this was mandatory reading for all teenagers
I think it would I make a lot of
young people feel incredibly comfortable and also knowledgeable and the same
goes for adults because unfortunately we can quite often get beyond our teenage
years and not really have had a good education and introduction to these
subjects next up however to keep the
random mishmash of things going I want to
recommend on writing a memoir of the
craft by Stephen King this is partially
Stephen King's memoir of his journey as
a writer and partially a book on writing
and how to be a writer sort of how to
live a writer's life how to make writing a
part of your life in a really positive way and it shows Stephen King's
writing journey and how he embraced
writing and how writing was a part of his
life and his journey as opposed to him
having taken like two years out of
University while his parents paid for him to write a novel in Spain which is fine
but it's not the reality for most people
who want to be a writer and Stephen
King had all the other elements of life going on whilst he was still pursuing
his writing and enjoying honing his craft and whilst you follow his life
your also pick up some really
practical and important pieces of advice
so for anybody that's interested in
writing I would say this is an excellent book to pick up and again incredibly
accessible I just find this to be such a
readable book despite being on a topic that is meant to guide you through
something
it reads wonderfully again it feels like
a conversation and Stephen King doesn't
try to make things more complicated than
they need to be so I would highly
recommend this one my next
recommendation is I am Malala which is a
memoir now this one's interesting
because you can buy the regular adult version of this book or there is a
slightly abridged version of this book
targeted at young adults whatever one
you want to read is fine because this is
about you finding your feet in
nonfiction and you developing a love of
nonfiction so don't let anybody tell you
one is the wrong one to read whatever works for you know this book whichever
version you read I personally would say
is very accessible this tells of malala's story as a Pakistani girl
dealing with the Taliban in her country
and their oppression of women and her
desire to have access to education and her and her father's fight for women to
have access to education she was eventually shot by the Taliban and
survived and is now continuing to spread
this really important message and this is just a wonderful wonderful book it is
very emotional yet incredibly readable because Malala was a young
person when she was experiencing all of
this and when she was writing this book with the help of another it feels like
the story of a young girl it doesn't
feel like an adult has written this book
and I feel like that's the right way for
it to feel it feels so personal it feels
so real and um it just is so important
and I cannot express to you how
readable this book is it is so readable
yet so full of important content and I
think books can be like that and I think it's really important that the are like
that I don't think you have to sacrifice
quality for accessibility I also want to
recommend you I call myself a feminist
this is an essay anthology so it's actually
a collection of various different essays
by various different voices they're all
also quite short essays and I feel like
they are perhaps best compared to blog posts they read like substantial
blog posts that's what they read like
and I think because of that this is such
an accessible book again it's a very
introductory book to the topic of
feminism it might be too introductory
for some of you others may still
appreciate it even if you've read other
feminist texts but one of the main messages of this book is that each of
the individuals
is describing why they call themselves a
feminist so it's enforcing the
importance of actually identifying as a
feminist and how identifying as a
feminist is both acknowledging that you
desire equality and an end to sexism but
also that that doesn't currently exist
and by calling yourself a feminist you're saying I want to do something to
to make this better I want to be a part
of something that is fighting to change
this in society and there are so many
different people talking in this book
from so many different backgrounds and because of that you get a really nice
mixture I think it's a really
encouraging inspiring and powerful
collection of essays but really really easy reading but lastly I wanted to give
a little shout out to nonfiction graphic
novels that I think this is one of the
best and most accessible ways to
introduce yourself to nonfiction especially if you like graphic novels
so I did a whole video on
nonfiction graphic novels which means
I'm not going to rattle all of them off in
this video if you are interested in
reading nonfiction graphic novels if you
think that might be a good route for you
then check out the video there are
multiple recommendations in it one of my
all-time favorite nonfiction graphic
0:13:44.550,0:13:50.330 Novels however is Persepolis by Marjane
Satrapi which is another memoir about Marjane
Satrapi who is an Iranian women
and it's about her life growing up
within and outside of Iran but those are
my recommendations for easy and
accessible nonfiction yet all excellent
books once again you don't have to
sacrifice quality for accessibility both
aren't possible and I think it's an impressive feat to write accessible
nonfiction so em these authors have all
done amazing things and I would love to
hear what your recommendations would be
for easy accessible nonfiction and
perhaps em people in the comments can get some more recommendations for books
on different topics that perhaps I haven't covered in this video cause I
certainly can't cover everything and
where did you start your nonfiction
journey if you are in that process what boot got you into nonfiction
or what kind of books do let me know but until next time guys happy reading good
luck on your nonfiction journey and I will see you all again soon bye