Friday 31 May 2013

Armchair BEA: Ethics & Non-Fiction


I started to write a post on Literary Fiction yesterday, but life in the form of a small and wriggly ginger baby got in the way, so anyway, onwards!

Today's topics are Ethics and Non-Fiction, both things I have opinions about. To be fair, it would probably be easier to find something I don't have an opinion about but there we go.

The ethics part of this post is going to be short and sweet. I personally have no experience with plagiarism, but my feelings on it are don't do it. I always give credit whenever I've been inspired by anybody else (I probably link back to other people too much, but I figure it's better to do it more rather than less) - it's nice to share the love anyway. The other side of it is that if I have no inspiration I'm quite happy not to post for a few weeks rather than steal other people's ideas and content. I don't understand people who are that... I don't know. Lazy? Pressured? that they have to steal other people's content. I know from personal experience that often when I do actually get a post written, it constitutes several hours of work and I wouldn't appreciate people stealing chunks of it. Give credit where credit is due, and if you can't be original maybe think again about keeping a blog.

That is all.

Now, non-fiction! I'm pretty excited bout this genre at the moment. The last year or so has been big for me in terms of non-fiction reading. I'm going to give a couple of my favourites and a few that I'm particularly excited about from my TBR.

So this year my favourites have been :

Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti - If you missed how much I loved this book you can check out my review/rant here. I loved it so much I even did a giveaway and that's a big deal as I'm on that part of maternity leave I don't get paid for now...

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - This is a memoir but pretty much the most frikking awesome thing I've read in a long long time. I want to read everything else Strayed has written and I finished the book totally inspired.

**EDIT**
I cannot BELIEVE I missed out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I loved this book so much I couldn't even write a review of it although I tried several times. If you care at all about food sustainability or local produce, you must read it.

And here, in no particular order of preference, is a stack of books from my non-fiction shelf that I have yet to read:




 
These are picked purely because Bossypants and Books,Baguettes and Bedbugs have both been recommended to me numerous times by other bloggers, and because I love and adore Nora Ephron and Bill Bryson. Just to put it in perspective, there are about 30 more books just on my non-fiction shelves that I haven't read yet.
 
However, I still want more recommendations! What are you favourites? :-) 

10 comments:

  1. I love Bill Bryson's books too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really, really, really want to read Full Frontal Feminism and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Great picks :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah the Bill Bryson book is great. If you like it, then you might also like HOME - The story of everyone who lived in our house by Julie Myerson http://www.librarything.com/work/170998/book/85975183

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bossypants is hilarious ;) Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti is a great one too!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think my to-read list of non-fiction books on GoodReads is as long as my fiction list. So many great books that both educate and entertain.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I cannot wait to read Bossypants at some point! And while I haven't read that Bill Bryson book pictured, I did read The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. That book wasn't my favorite, but I did like his writing style and will give him another chance sometime down the road.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Not much else to be said about the topic. Credit man...just give it!

    Sandy @ Somewhere Only We Know

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm looking forward to the new 'Celebrations' from Mennonite Girls can Cook !

    and I appreciate your ethics views and actions too ;)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Full Frontal Feminism sounds like a great read! A book that I'm guess is very similar is How To be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, which I adored :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. I loved Wild so much. Her struggle just spoke to me in this deep way, even though my life is way, way different. Yay, nonfiction!

    ReplyDelete