laurie’s book company

Laurie’s Picks of Non-fiction

Many readers only like factual books and that’s good because approximately 70% of all books published are non-fiction. I love a great history book or a biography. When I’m not reading I love to cook and have an extensive collection of cookbooks and really enjoy the genre of food writing. Humorous writers like David Sedaris or Bill Richardson are a great antidote to the more stressful times in life. While most of us will never climb Mt. Everest or visit Antarctica, the breadth of travel writing makes it possible for the reader to travel anywhere. Here are a few of my favorites:

uu The Case for Books, Robert Darnton. Is the age of the printed book coming to an end? If history is any guide, notes Harvard University Library director Robert Darnton, not any time soon. In this collection of previously published essays, an unashamed apology for the printed word, Darnton, an eloquent writer and one of the world's foremost historians of the book, offers a fascinating history of our literary past and a penetrating look at the disruptive forces shaping the future of publishing.

I just finished the highly enjoyable and somewhat irreverent new book by Anthony Bourdain, MEDIUM RAW; A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. A follow-up to his bestseller KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL in which he blew the lid off the restaurant industry, Bourdain's personality shines through in all he does, whether it's eating seal eyeballs on his TV show "A Cook's Tour" or dissing Rachel Ray. A somewhat mellower Tony shares his views on food, eating, why anyone would want tobe a chef, other chefs, his addictions and his new found happiness with wife #2 and a baby girl. Great stuff.

uu In Gretzky’s Tears, Hockey, Canada & the Day Everything Changed, well-known sports journalist Stephen Brunt looks at implications, both short and long-term, of the infamous Gretzky trade. With Gretzky traded to the Los Angeles Kings, hockey was meant to open up to the American public. How did that work out? Not so great according to Brunt although he maintains his tears at the press conference here were tears of joy for being chosen to spread hockey internationally.

uu SuperFreakonomics, the highly anticipated sequel to the best-selling Freakonomics, was released on October 20, 2009. Steven Levitt, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and author Stephen Dubner have teamed together to apply economic reasoning to a wide range of real-world questions. As with the original Freakonomics book, SuperFreakonomics is largely based upon the research of Professor Levitt, who has tackled problems inside and outside the field of economics.

uu Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner is one of my favorite books. Published almost a decade ago,

it recalls Catherine's formative years growing up in Lewiston, a small town just across the border from Niagara Falls. A precocious child born to parents in their forties, her doctor recommended she burn off her excessive energy by getting a job - she was four years old. In her delightful new memoir, After the Fall, the family moves to Buffalo and Catherine moves into her teenage years experiencing all that the 1960's threw at her. She is laugh out loud funny at times and in many ways the memoir is a tribute to her wonderful and eccentric parents who let her be herself. She read at Greenwood’s last year, and was simply wonderful!

uu A delightful book sure to make you laugh is Beyond Belfast, by Will Ferguson, one of Canada's funniest writers.

His How to Be a Canadian is a true gem and his novel Happiness makes me grin just thinking about it (what if someone wrote a self-help book that actually worked?) His travel books are wonderful (Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw & Hitching Rides with Buddha) and his brand new book is one of those. Beyond Belfast: a 560 Mile Walk Across Northern Ireland on Sore Feet sees Ferguson walking the Ulster Way. Winding through small towns and boggy moors, he stops in IRA Pubs, eats blood sausage like never before and along the way searches for his own roots. Irreverent, laugh out loud funny and full of history, it is a great read!

uu I felt the need for a little humor in my life and who better than A.J. Jacobs, editor at large at Esquire magazine and author of two previous books. In the first he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and wrote the highly amusing Know It All. Then he decided to follow every rule in the Bible and wrote The Year of Living Biblically.

Jacobs’ latest offering is The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment. Believing we cannot fully understand something unless it's experienced, Jacobs shares his adventures including practicing "Radical Honesty", pretending he's a gorgeous young woman internet dating, going to the Oscars in disguise and outsourcing his life to a company in Bangalore, India. His ever-patient wife even talks him into one month of his giving in to her every whim - foot massages, chick flicks, etc. Let's say his idea of marriage changes. Great stuff!

uu Wayson Choy is one of my favourite authors. Not Yet, his recently released memoir, is a stirring work which begins with his near death in 2001 when an asthma-heart attack has him hospitalized for months only to recover and have another heart attack four years later that required quadruple bypass surgery. Beautifully written -- as are all his novels, including The Jade Peony, Paper Shadows and All That Matters -- Wayson Choy gives us in Not Yet an honest and intimate look at life and death.

uu The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale, is a true crime story that reads like a great Victorian mystery. Set in 1860 in rural England, the case focuses on the grisly murder of a three year-old boy. With no apparent clues to be found, the newly-formed Scotland Yard sends in Jonathan Whicher, one of its top new detectives; his findings cause an uproar as well as the birth of the detective novel genre.

uu The Secret Lives of Saints, by BC journalist Daphne Bramham, is subtitled “Child Brides & Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect” and examines the community of Bountiful, British Columbia. This fundamentalist sect

believes that their leader speaks directly to God; his rules include each man having at least three wives and women are only accepted into heaven if invited by their husband. Their duty is to “keep sweet”, have many children and obey their husbands. The most appalling aspect of this book is its laying bare the ineffectiveness of both the BC and federal governments to address the issue. This book was a real eye-opener in so many ways.

uu Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson, is a timely book to say the least, The Ascent of Money looks at the history of money from the moneylenders of Mesopotamia to the current economic situation. Using historical evidence in a lively writing manner, Ferguson delves into several economic theories and their outcomes to support his theory that economic freedom is far different than economic stability.

uu Alain de Botton first made the bestseller lists with his book How Proust Can Change Your Life, a tongue in cheek self-help book that uses Marcel's angst to teach us many useful things. de Botton, Swiss-born, Cambridge educated author has also tackled architecture, philosophy, love and travel. In his new book The Pleasures & Sorrows of Work, he surveys the world of warehouses, accounting, cookie-makers, and entrepreneurs to pose his philosophical questions -- why do we work and why do we choose the jobs we do? Can we be fulfilled personally and still love our jobs and what will we define as success? Witty and very clever, de Botton is a joy to read!

uu In 1914 Godfrey Davis arrived in India,

a junior officer in the Indian Civil Service. By the time he reluctantly returned to England thirty years later he was a high court judge with a knighthood. Sir Godfrey fell in love with India. He sympathized with the independence movement and shared a great friendship and mutual admiration with Mahatma Gandhi. Wendy Davis inherited her father’s affection for India and its people. In Dal & Rice she chronicles the memories of her childhood and offers a poignant and measured character study of her father. Her story is part social history, part travelogue, but mostly a very personal account of a relationship with an exotic, chaotic, and often mysterious country.

uu Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by economist Jeff Rubin is awake up call about the global economy and what will happen when there is no more cheap oil. Rubin argues there will be "peak oil" and that the supply & demand model does not apply when nature is the chief supplier. When transportation costs and environmental issues outweigh the value of strawberries in February, whether we like it or not, our world will get smaller, but not necessarily worse. There should be a revitalization of local economies, manufacturing and employment. A really interesting look at globalization and certainly not boring!

uu A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great book for anyone who feels they don’t understand science. Of course, anything by Bill Bryson is great. He mostly writes travel books with a cranky and unflinching honesty that is completely addictive – I particularly liked Notes from a Small Island about his walk through Great Britain.

uu Riding with Rilke by Edmonton author Ted Bishop is his account of recovering from a motorcycle accident that gives him the chance to reread his favorite books and examine a life combining his profession (University professor specializing in Virginia Woolf) and his personal passion (motorcycling).

uu Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gilder is an autobiography of growing up as an only child to an eccentric couple just across the border from Canada. I laughed out loud at her recollections and highly recommend it for book groups.

uu The General Book of Ignorance is a compilation taken from a BBC TV show of the same name where the authors strike out to prove that everything we take for granted is wrong (the highest mountain, the color of the universe and other such material trivia). Great fun for the whole family

uu Aphrodite by Isabelle Allende is part memoir, cookbook and art book as Allende shares her Chilean background and love for food as both nourishment and aphrodisiac. (Her novel ‘House of the Spirits” is another one of my favorites).

uu Not Quite What I Was Planning is an anthology from Smith magazine wherein people describe their lives in six words. A lot of fun and quite thought-provoking – you try it!

uu The Professor & the Madman by Simon Winchester is a wonderful book that combines the history of the making of the Oxford English dictionary with the personal story of one of its greatest contributors – a doctor in jail for murdering women. Anything by Winchester is good as he likes to take a look at small and often forgotten events in history that lead to larger impacts upon out world.

uu Kitchen Confidential by New York chef Anthony Bourdain will open your eyes to the real world of restaurants (never eat buffet on Monday for example). Bourdain has also written two restaurant based mysteries and has followed up on his first book about food with others including his around the world trips where he will eat anything (and I mean anything!)

uu Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman is her autobiography of growing up in a book-drenched family (her father was Clifton Fadiman, the great anthologist) and how near and dear to her heart reading has become

uu What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim by Canadian author Jane Christmas is a wonderful “Midlife Misadventure in Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela” wherein Jane decides to get a group of women together to trek this famous religious pilgrimage and the problems and joy this creates.

laurie’s book company

laurie’s picks: non-fiction