We seem to talk about fiction so much of the time, with diversions into poetry, but I know that some of my most important reading has been non-fiction. I wondered what non-fiction you've caught radically enlarging or changing your writing/world-view/mind/opinions. Or has just taken up permanent resonance your head. Maybe we should exclude books about writing, as they get covered elsewhere.

In no particular order, I'm very, very glad I read:

1688 - John E. Wells
Touching the Void - Joe Simpson
Citizens - Simon Schama
The Battle for God - Karen Armstrong
The Language of Clothes - Alison Lurie
The Myth & Cult of the Virgin Mary - Marina Warner
The Face of Battle - John Keegan
The Subversive Stitch - Roszika Parker
The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell - Aldous Huxley
On Photography - Susan Sontag
The Lunar Men - Jenny Uglow
The Isles - Norman Davies
The Fifth Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries - Hugh Massingberd

and believe it or believe it not, some of:

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus - John Grey

I think is some ways it's a more revealing list than an equivalent list of fiction.

Emma

Asylum
Stigmata both by Irving Goffmann

Dickens
Blake both by Peter Ackroyd

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Flannigan's Version by Richard Flannigan

Zen In The Art Of Writing by Ray Bradbury

At The Edge Of The Primeval Forest by Albert Schweitzer

A Footnote To History
Father Damien both by Robert Louis Stevenson

Yeats Biographies by Richard Ellmann

The First World War by AJP Taylor


and too many others to name. Zillions of biographies and history books, but these are some of the seminal ones.

Good thread idea!


Mike

I'll be back in the bookshop tomorrow I think.

My list:

True and False &
Writing in Restaurants - David Mamet

William Shakespeare - Anthony Holden

Brecht on Theatre

Dark Star Safari - Paul Theroux

Empire - Niall Ferguson

Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

Going Solo - Roald Dahl

The Adventure of English - Melvyn Bragg

The Oxford Book of Essays

For my money, I'd go for:

Conversations About the End of Time - Umberto Eco (amongst others)

Riders of the Storm - John Densmore

Electric Gypsy - Harry Shapiro

The History of Witchcraft and Demonology -Montague Summers

Holy Blood, Holy Grail - Michael Baigent

The Long Dark Road Out of Hell - Marilyn Manson

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-drugs-and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Changed Hollywood
- Peter Biskind

Hell's Angels - Hunter S.Thompson

To name but a few.

JB

<Added>

*Riders On The Storm!

Ooh,good thread. I'd add loads but all I can think of is Are You Somebody? by Nuala O'Faolain, utterly utterly wonderful. Yes she's a novelist but this is a frank and terrifyingly vulnerable autobiography, touching on love, death, loss, alcoholism, Catholiscm, and everything in between. Oh- and writing. Also Ane Enright's Making Babies: Journeys Into Motherhood. Again, a fine novelist, again irish, and again about everything in the world, written beautifully. Inspiring for writers and readers.

Anna,

I agree that both of these books are great. I enjoyed them very much but please excuse me for one small correction. Anne Enright's book is "Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood".

Another non-fiction book from a novelist which I loved is 'The Road to Wigan Pier' by George Orwell.

Ashlinn

The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allen and Barbara Pease is one of the best non-fiction books I own. I've always been interested in body language, and I love watching people when I'm out and about, so I chose this book after browsing through a few in Waterstones. I'm so glad I've read it; it makes you think about all of the subconscious body language you use on a day-to-day basis, and gives you the upper hand in personal and business situations. Read it and be amazed at what you will learn from it.

Two books, which I read recently and which had a profound effect on my understanding of the significance of the Eastern Front on the outcome of WWII, are: 'Stalingrad' and 'Berlin - The Downfall 1945', both by Antony Beevor. As well as dealing with the military events and strategies pursued by Stalin and Hitler, they also show very poignantly the effect of the fighting on the lives of ordinary people caught in the meat grinder. They are both meticulously researched and very readable. (End of advert).

Fascinating thread.

smudger

I find it difficult to read war books. I read one on Colditz and found it truly upsetting. But I liked learning about the Blitz in school, and wouldnt mind reading more about that. The story of Dunkirk also gripped me.

JB

In Search of the Miraculous - P D Ouspensky
Boyhood with Gurdjieff/Gurdjieff Remembered - Fritz Peters
Re-visioning the Earth - Paul Devereux
The English Table Soccer Association Yearbook 1977 - Terry Edge
Jupiter's Travels - Ted Simon
Dark White - Jim Schnabel
Becoming a Writer - Dorothea Brande
I Lost My Heart to the Belles - Pete Davies
Maya Angelou's autobigraphical series (except the last one)
Wouldn't it be Nice - Brian Wilson

Wow Terry, did you really write that? What a claim to fame.

I guess I should also mention Alan Watts's The Wisdom of Insecurity because I'm pretty sure that book saved my life. Also M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled was rather interesting.

JB

I agree about the Road Less Travelled but Scott Peck wrote one of the most arrogant, ludicrous and plain wrong books I ever skimmed – can't remember the title but it was to do with the stone circles of Britain. He jetted over with his wife for a few weeks, visited some sites then pronounced upon their purpose and meaning in mountains of waffle. He obviously hadn't even bothered to read anything by people like Paul Devereux who's spent a lifetime seriously researching ancient sites. Needless to say, Peck's 'findings' were only about thirty years behind current theories.

Hmmm, well, megaliths have a way of confounding the most erudite of scholars. Of course, those in the know understand that they are just the remnants of prehistoric hotels - kind of like a Holiday Inn for neanderthals.

Does the Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield qualify as non-fiction? That had some good ideas in, but the last chapters about vibrating Egyptians left me a bit baffled.

JB

I forgot to mention The Modern Antiquarian by Julian Cope. If anyone's interested in tramping through muddy fields, searching out megaliths, this book is an excellent guide. Cope is a true enthusiast and although he does indulge in recording his personal sensings at each site he visits, you can easily ignore these. I've used it to visit dozens of sites I didn't even know existed.

I loved his album Autogeddon.

JB