Welcome to our Fun Friday Roundup!
This roundup is all about our favorite nonfiction books (that aren't self-help). We've pulled together a full roundup of all the nonfiction books Alix and Kelly recommended in our April and August Fun Friday episodes on The LitJoy Podcast. Let us know in the comments which of these nonfiction books is on your own favorites list—or which one you're most excited to read!
Part 1 of Alix and Kelly's Favorite Nonfiction Books Rundown
UFO of God: The Extraordinary True Story of Chris Bledsoe
Chris Bledsoe
“There is a hidden world around us asking to be recognized. It’s up to us to open ourselves to the possibility of seeing it.” – Chris Bledsoe
UFO of God Synopsis Sneak Peek
This is the true story of hope, love, lies, and deception, involving officials from the U.S. Government, CIA, NASA, a string of professors, and the church. Prepare to go on a spiritual journey of awakening and transformation with a visit from the Lady, remote viewing, assassination plot of the Pope, the Vatican, dripping orbs, a burning tree, the Monroe Institute, and healing the son of an elite Washington DC power broker with ties to the White House. 16 years on, the phenomena still visits the Bledsoe family and affects the lives of people who come in contact with them. To outsiders, this can be seen as demonic, but to those willing to keep an open mind, it is a blessing.
Greenlights
Matthew McConaughey
“Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.” – Matthew McConaughey
Greenlights Synopsis Sneak Peek
I’ve been in this life for 50 years, been trying to work out its riddle for 42, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last 35. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”
The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
Melinda French Gates
“How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings—and especially for women? Because, when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.” – Melinda Gates
The Moment of Lift Synopsis Sneak Peek
For the last 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift society up, you need to stop keeping women down.
In this moving and compelling book, Melinda shares lessons she’s learned from the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world. As she writes in the introduction, “That is why I had to write this book - to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.”
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Lori Gottlieb
“You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn’t one of them.” – Lori Gottlieb
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Synopsis Sneak Peek
From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world - where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).
With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.
Becoming
Michelle Obama
“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.” – Michelle Obama
Becoming Synopsis Sneak Peek
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites listeners into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becomingis the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.
Part 2 of Alix and Kelly's Favorite Nonfiction Books Rundown
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
Malcolm Gladwell
“We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away.” – Malcolm Gladwell
Talking to Strangers Synopsis Sneak Peek
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?
Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patrick Radden Keefe
“I think Upton Sinclair once wrote that a man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on his not understanding.” – Patrick Radden Keefe
Empire of Pain Synopsis Sneak Peek
The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.
Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs Synopsis Sneak Peek
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years - as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues - Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
Educated: A Memoir
Tara Westover
“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell.” – Tara Westover
Educated Synopsis Sneak Peek
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Daniel James Brown
“Perhaps the seeds of redemption lay not just in perseverance, hard work, and rugged individualism. Perhaps they lay in something more fundamental—the simple notion of everyone pitching in and pulling together.” – Daniel James Brown
The Boys in the Boat Synopsis Sneak Peek
For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.
Loved this rundown of nonfiction books? Have you checked out our Fun Friday Book Recommendations Podcasts yet? They're great for when you're short on time and in need of something new to read! Kelly and Alix, along with a slew of fascinating guests, talk everything from fantasy to romance to nonfiction books. Need details on the books they mention? Hop back over here, because we'll be sharing roundups of all their book recommendations right here on the LitJoy Lounge each month!
Missed these Podcasts on nonfiction books? Check them out below!
Nonfiction Books Fun Friday Part 1:
Topics Discussed:
[3:05] UFO of God: the Extraordinary True Story of Chris Bledsoe by Chris Bledsoe
[6:39] Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
[7:43] The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda French Gates
[10:52] Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
[12:35] Becoming by Michelle Obama
Nonfiction Books Fun Friday Part 2:
Topics Discussed:
- [0:44] Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell
- [4:43] Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
- [7:45] Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- [10:10] Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
- [12:36] The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
*As a reminder, we at LitJoy care about your emotional well-being, and highly recommend checking for trigger warnings when starting any new book! We hope you'll do so for any and all of our book recommendation roundups. Your mental health comes first!
