my mind on books

The Non-Fiction Five Challenge from “Thoughts of Joy”

Since I already read a lot of non-fiction I looked for books in areas I don’t normally read or at least that I would not have read except for this challenge (but that still look interesting). Usually I like to read books about ideas, so for the challenge I’m selecting some history and memoirs. Participants are also asked to select a variety, not all one genre, so I hope the list I’ve come up with is ok. My five books are these:

1. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about a cholera epidemic in London

2. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

3. The Cincinnati Arch: Learning From Nature In The City by John Tallmadge (I had not heard of this but it looks interesting, and adds a nature component to the list, something else I haven’t been reading much of)

4. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit

5. A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson (not sure how much reading will be involved in this one, possibly supplemented by another book on Japan, such as Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa or Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes))

alternates: History in English Words by Owen Barfield, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee.
Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder is scheduled to come out on May 1 and I’m looking forward to reading it, but didn’t want to count it for the challenge since I would have picked it up anyway.

Now that I have the list finalized, more or less, I’m looking forward to starting! Thanks, Joy, for the challenge.