Misc. Non-Fiction Variety
Good nonfiction writing is, largely, about the conviction of one’s impressions. Your honest “take” on the world. I often tell my students to mind not only the details, but, in particular, the weird details. But there is much truth in the strange; sometimes it’s the only way to reassess the ordinary. Of course, it’s frightening to risk the truth, mainly for fear that somebody might read what we’ve written and take it badly or, worse, think badly of us—that our observations and hard-won insights are bizarre or creepy. That’s why, to really get the ink flowing, I often console myself with the morbid thought that, in all likelihood, when I die nobody’s gonna remember me, so why the hell not write what’s true? -Jay Kirk
-Sherry Ellis, Now Write! Nonfiction (Now Write! Series)
The banner of the magazine I’m proud to have founded and I continue to edit, Creative Nonfiction, defines the genre simply, succinctly, and accurately as “true stories well told.” The goal is to make nonfiction stories read like fiction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy. The word “creative” in creative nonfiction has to do with how the writer conceives ideas, summarizes situations, defines personalities, describes places—and shapes and presents information. The word “nonfiction” means the material is true. The cardinal rule is clear—and cannot be violated. This is the pledge the writer makes to the reader—the maxim we live by, the anchor of creative nonfiction: “You can’t make this stuff up!”
-Lee Gutkind, You Can't Make This Stuff Up
“The non-fiction bestseller lists frequently prove that we all want to know more about everything, even if we didn't know that we wanted to know - we're just waiting for the right person to come along and tell us about it.”
― Nick Hornby
Classified by the Dewey Decimal System (or tried to classify by the Dewey Decimal System)
“He wished he was with his mom in her library, where everything was safe and numbered and organized by the Dewey decimal system. Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for, like the meaning of your dream, or your dad.”
― Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck
001.9 Mysterious World Unexplained, UFO’s, Bigfoot, etc.
Mysterious (mist·ris), a. [f. L. mysterium MYSTERY1 + OUS. Cf. F. mystérieux.] 1. Full of or fraught with mystery; wrapt in mystery; hidden from human knowledge or understanding; impossible or difficult to explain, solve, or discover; of obscure origin, nature, or purpose.
-Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman.
Books in this section were talked about and recommended on the podcast
“Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World”: Our world is full of mysteries.
Ancient Egypt was a unique culture whose magic reaches down the millennia to us through words such as mummies, pyramids, the Sphinx, Tutankhamun, pharaohs, and curses. Few Egyptologists are able to use adventures and secrets from the realm of the pharaohs to capture people’s hearts. Bob Brier is one of them. Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 initiated the modern era of Egyptomania: We can say that Bonaparte, Vivant Denon (the head of his scientific team), and others discovered ancient Egypt for everyone. The publication of the Description de l’Égypte and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone can be thought of as the keys that opened the door for the world to understand the land of the pharaohs. Zahi Hawass Cairo, March 2013
-Bob Brier, . Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs
Area 51 is a riddle. Very few people comprehend what goes on there, and millions want to know. To many, Area 51 represents the Shangri-la of advanced espionage and war fighting systems. To others it is the underworld of aliens and captured UFOs. The truth is that America’s most famous secret federal facility was set up in order to advance military science and technology faster and further than any other foreign power’s in the world. Why it is hidden from the world in southern Nevada’s high desert within a ring of mountain ranges is the nexus of the riddle of Area 51.
-Annie Jacobsen, Area 51
“In this book, therefore, I divide the things that are “impossible” into three categories.
The first are what I call Class I impossibilities. These are technologies that are impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics. So they might be possible in this century, or perhaps the next, in modified form. They include teleportation, antimatter engines, certain forms of telepathy, psychokinesis, and invisibility.
The second category is what I term Class II impossibilities. These are technologies that sit at the very edge of our understanding of the physical world. If they are possible at all, they might be realized on a scale of millennia to millions of years in the future. They include time machines, the possibility of hyperspace travel, and travel through wormholes.
The final category is what I call Class III impossibilities. These are technologies that violate the known laws of physics. Surprisingly, there are very few such impossible technologies. If they do turn out to be possible, they would represent a fundamental shift in our understanding of physics.”
― Michio Kaku, Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
“In the future, an adventurous sociologist might consider writing a paper that examines the “caste” system in anomalies research.
The “nuts and bolts” UFO research people regard the “psychosocial” UFO researchers with disdain.
UFO researchers in general regard the cryptozoologists with contempt.
Cryptozoologists who embrace the possibility of a paranormal connection to Bigfoot sightings are generally viewed with derision because of the prevailing view that Sasquatch is an undiscovered primate species, not an interdimensional playmate of alien beings.
Likewise, the paranormal researchers view the UFO researchers with disdain, while the ghost hunters keep their distance from everybody else. And all of this hostility and contempt is a vain and so far unsuccessful attempt to earn a small measure of respect and acceptance (and maybe funding) from mainstream science, a lofty but unlikely goal.”
― Colm A. Kelleher, Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah
In one of his published scientific articles, Morse had presented a number of the children’s NDEs. For example, an eight-year-old boy who’d almost drowned after his parents’ car had swerved off an icy road into a river in Washington had reported: “I could see the car filling up with water, and it covered me all up. Then everything went blank. Suddenly I was floating in the air. I felt like I could swim in the air.” He was very surprised to still be thinking, as he knew he must have died. He continued, “Then I floated into the huge noodle. Well, I thought it was a noodle, but maybe it was a tunnel. Yeah, it must have been a tunnel because a noodle doesn’t have a rainbow in it.”
A five-year-old girl whose heart had stopped had reported: “I rose up in the air and saw a man like Jesus, because he was nice and he was talking to me. I saw dead people, grandmas and grandpas, and babies waiting to be born. I saw a light like a rainbow, which told me who I was and where I should go. Jesus told me it wasn’t my time to die.”
-Sam Parnia, What Happens When We Die?
004 – 006 Computer Science
Just as designing algorithms for computers was originally a subject that fell into the cracks between disciplines—an odd hybrid of mathematics and engineering—so, too, designing algorithms for humans is a topic that doesn’t have a natural disciplinary home. Today, algorithm design draws not only on computer science, math, and engineering but on kindred fields like statistics and operations research. And as we consider how algorithms designed for machines might relate to human minds, we also need to look to cognitive science, psychology, economics, and beyond.
-Brian Christian, Algorithms to Live By
020 Library & information sciences
Libraries and Bookshops
“Congratulations on the new library, because it isn't just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you -- and most of all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life.
― Isaac Asimov, [Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]”
“I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
― Ray Bradbury
bookshops are
time machines
spaceships
story-makers
secret-keepers
dragon-tamers
dream-catchers
fact-finders
& safe places.
-Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book
“Aziraphale collected books.
If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it.”
― Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“At this time on a weekday morning, the library was refuge to the retired, the unemployed, and the unemployable. ... 'I'm not always this gabby,' the librarian said. 'It's just so nice to talk to someone who isn't constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube.”
― Myla Goldberg, The False Friend
“Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.”
― John Green
““I also work here because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else. As a breed, we're the ultimate generalists. I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live.”
A library is a miracle. A place where you can learn just about anything, for free. A place where your mind can come alive.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“In principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
I know at least three people who have personal libraries exceeding 30,000 books, which is roughly how many books are in your local branch library. How many of those have they read or will they read? Answer: only a small percentage.
There's no way to devote more than a few hours a day to reading. It would be optimistic to say any one of them could read (not skim) even two books a week. At that rate it would take each one 300 years to read all the books in his library. My guess is that none of them will be around that long.
So why do they have so many books? Why do people download 30,000 songs to their iPods or whatever? At 3 minutes per song, it would take 1,500 hours to listen to each song once, and most of those songs are dreck. So why do people collect them? I suppose it's because they can, and so with large personal libraries.
-Karl Keating
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of physical evidence we have that people are still thinking.”
― Jerry Seinfeld
“Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Pickwick Bookshop was known in all the literary, educated circles as the best bookstore west of the Mississippi. It had opened in 1938 and was an enormous three-story structure on Hollywood Boulevard that prided itself on the depth of its stock and almost supernaturally astute staff. Affectionately referred to as "The Big Bookshop," it was the place to browse, schmooze, and find books that no one else in town carried. Many of its customers were writers, artists, academics, and celebrities from all walks of life who knew that when they came to Pickwick, they would be treated with the utmost discretion and civility.
Despite the crappy wage, I considered myself a lucky girl to be working at such an extraordinary ordinary place. I loved it from the very first morning, when the staff gradually welcomed me from every corner of the store, emerging from behind bookcases and the rolling ladders attached to the walls for access to stock on the uppermost shelves. Some slid around from behind the long sales counter to greet me before counting the money in the cash drawers they'd just slipped into the registers.
To a soul, everyone was friendly and, to varying degrees, seemed to hold the potential for madness.
That day, I met the kind of people I'd been subconsciously waiting for all my life. Mad poets. Gay men. Hilarious alcoholics. Old queens and struggling actors; street hustlers and college dropouts. I shook hands with frustrated novelists and capricious astrologers. They all worked at Pickwick and would soon become my extended family.
-Wendy Werris, An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books
030 Encyclopedias & books of facts
Welcome to The Fun Knowledge Encyclopedia: The Crazy Stories Behind the World's Most Interesting Facts!
This book will take you on a rollercoaster ride, from the ridiculous to the laughable, to the simply interesting and thought-provoking.
In 1992, a crate with 28,000 rubber ducks fell off a ship. Whatever happened to those rubber ducks?
We'll give you all the details!
Who set the world record for the most consecutive hours of staying awake, and how did they do it?
What exactly is the Sourtoe Cocktail, and where did it originate?
Discover facts about everything from pop culture to crazy stories of the common folk, to history, to science.
You'll be the only one of your friends to know how much the average cost is to climb Mount Everest
or what part of the gingerbread man is commonly eaten first.
Prepare to laugh, shrug, shake your head, and learn tons of new, intriguing information.
Who says reading can't be fun?!
-Bill O’Neill, The Fun Knowledge Encyclopedia: The Crazy Stories Behind the World's Most Interesting Facts (Trivia Bill's General Knowledge Book 1)
There are plenty of books that profess to tell you the meaning of life, but where can you go to find the answers to these little mysteries of modern life, the really important stuff? There is only one place, and you've found it—
Imponderables.
Imponderables are questions that cannot be answered by numbers or measurements or standard reference books. They are the kinds of questions that haunt you for hours… until you forget about them before you ever find their solutions. Repressing these knotty Imponderables might be a temporary solution, but you will recall them at the oddest moments, and they can torment you for the rest of your life.
-David Feldman, Imponderables
006 Self-Broadcasting
"Harry Potter isn’t real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am I real if you can see me and hear me, but only through the internet? Are you real if I can read your comment but I don’t know who you are or what your name is or where you’re from or what you look like or how old you are? I know all of those things about Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter’s real and you’re not."
— John Green
Blogging: “Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.”
-Andrew Sullivan
“Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second.”
― Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
“And so we arrive at a cosmic intersection, where an obscure topic of dubious relevance is written about by the type of weirdo who logs on to Wikipedia to write about obscure topics of dubious relevance.”
― Conor Lastowka, [Citation Needed]: The Best Of Wikipedia's Worst Writing
Podcasting:
The beautiful thing about podcasting is it's just talking. It can be funny, or it can be terrifying. It can be sweet. It can be obnoxious. It almost has no definitive form. In that sense it's one of the best ways to explore an idea, and certainly much less limiting than trying to express the same idea in stand up comedy. For some ideas stand up is best, but it's really, really nice to have podcasts as well.
-Joe Rogan
"When I was a little kid, I thought it would be so cool to find a dead body. Once again, I blame Stephen King for this, along with my overactive imagination, as watching Stand by Me as a six-year-old gave me some crazy ideas about what an adventure finding a body would be. And also, I associated River Phoenix and his all-encompassing gorgeousness with finding a body, so that didn’t help."
— Karen Kilgariff (Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide)
Youtube:
The joy of YouTube is that you can create content about anything you feel passionate about, however silly the subject matter.
-Zoe Sugg
Hi, I’m Felicia Day. I’m an actor. That quirky chick in that one science fiction show? You know the one I’m talking about. I’m never on the actual poster, but I always have a few good scenes that make people laugh. As a redhead, I’m a sixth-lead specialist, and I practically invented the whole “cute but offbeat hacker girl” trope on television. (Sorry. When I started doing it, it was fresh. I promise.) I’m the writer, producer, and actress/host/personality of hundreds of internet videos. Literally hundreds. I have a problem, guys (let’s talk more about it later). A lot of people know my work. And a lot of people do not. I like to refer to myself as “situationally recognizable.” It’s way better than “internet famous,” which makes me feel like I’m in the same category as a mentally challenged cat or a kid doing yo-yo tricks while riding a pogo stick. I know that kid, super talented. But the cat . . . not so much.
-Felicia Day, You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir
“Don't be something you're not. Unless you can be a fabulous unicorn. Always be a fabulous unicorn.”
― PewDiePie, This Book Loves You
“When life throws a wrench in your plans, catch it and build an IKEA bookshelf.”
― Tyler Oakley, Binge
070 Journalism/News
About Journalism:
“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.”
― Dave Barry
“Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.
-Marguerite Duras
As anthropologists began comparing notes on the world’s few remaining primitive cultures, they discovered something unexpected. From the most isolated tribal societies in Africa to the most distant islands in the Pacific, people shared essentially the same definition of what is news. They shared the same kind of gossip. They even looked for the same qualities in the messengers they picked to gather and deliver their news. They wanted people who could run swiftly over the next hill, accurately gather information, and engagingly retell it. Historians have pieced together that the same basic news values have held constant through time. “Humans have exchanged a similar mix of news . . . throughout history and across cultures,” historian Mitchell Stephens has written.
-Bill Kovach, The Elements of Journalism
Real Life Journalism
“June 17, 1972. Nine o'clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary attempt at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in?”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“The invariable question, asked only half-mockingly of reporters by editors at the Post (and then up the hierarchical line of editors) was 'What have you done for me today?' Yesterday was for the history books, not newspapers.
― Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men
“Literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as “literally” did not happen at all. As in, “He literally jumped out of his skin.” No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I’d suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting “literally” willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight—the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured”
― Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
Fictional Journalism/News
“After once having made the mistake of watching television news, I had worried for a while about an asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out human civilization. The anchorwoman had said it was not merely possible but probable. At the end of the report, she smiled.”
― Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
Wichita Falls, Texas, Winter 1870
CAPTAIN KIDD LAID out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment. He had been born in 1798 and the third war of his lifetime had ended five years ago and he hoped never to see another but now the news of the world aged him more than time itself. Still he stayed his rounds, even during the cold spring rains. He had been at one time a printer but the war had taken his press and everything else, the economy of the Confederacy had fallen apart even before the surrender and so he now made his living in this drifting from one town to another in North Texas with his newspapers and journals in a waterproof portfolio and his coat collar turned up against the weather. He rode a very good horse and was concerned that someone might try to take the horse from him but so far so good. So he had arrived in Wichita Falls on February 26 and tacked up his posters and put on his reading clothes in the stable. There was a hard rain outside and it was noisy but he had a good strong voice. He shook out the Journal’s pages.
-Paulette Jiles, News of the World
"As Harry and Ron rounded the clump of trees behind which Harry had first heard the dragons roar, a witch leapt out from behind them.
It was Rita Skeeter. She was wearing acid-green robes today; the Quick-Quotes Quill in her hand blended perfectly against them.
"Congratulations, Harry!' she said beaming at him. "I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How you felt facing that dragon? How do you feel now about the fairness of the scoring?"
"Yeah, you can have a word," said Harry savagely. "Goodbye!"
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
080 Quotations
There are so many quotes
By So many people
Even long before Jesus walked the earth as man
And still today Even more people
From Everywhere are coming up with still more quotes
Will writing new quotes every end?
Are we trying to out quote one another? –
This was made to fit with your theme and not to be the best quote of all time.
You’re not writing that down, are you? I’m just talking.
-Catholic Bard
“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”
― Winston S. Churchill
“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would
enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Many Inventions
“Don’t you ever get tired of quoting?” asked Dinah.
“No,” said Gage sitting up again. “Like a visit from Deputy
Herrera and Deputy Campbell, quoting reminds me there are people in the world besides only me. And other thoughts beside mine, and other ways of thinking.”
― Gregory Maguire, What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy
“[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious
business." (The Record Lie)”
― A.A. Milne, If I May
090 Manuscripts & rare books
Basically, the principal difference between us and most of the world is that for more than fifty years we have been partners in an unusual, sometimes esoteric business—that of rare books. It is a business in which knowledge is power, and the arts of detection often play a leading role. The electrifying alertness to what is unusual or important in an early printed book has been given the name Finger-Spitzengefühl. When Finger-Spitzengefühl is coupled with serendipity, the gates of paradise open for the dealer in old and rare. We have thrilled to the chase in our hunts for rare books. With deerstalker and magnifying glass we have uncovered our finds. In the old and the rare we have made connections, connections between past and present, between our books and our selves. We shared the thrill of the chase and the joy of the find. But we shared something else too. We shared our differences.
-Madeline B Stern, Old Books, Rare Friends
The most celebrated illuminated manuscripts in the world are, to most of us, as inaccessible in reality as very famous people. To a large extent, anyone with stamina and a travel budget can get to see many of the great paintings and architectural monuments, and may stand today in the presence of the Great Wall of China or Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. But try – just try – to have the Book of Kells removed from its glass case in Dublin so that you can turn the pages. It won’t happen.
Palaeographers, the general term for those of us who study old manuscripts, become accustomed to working in the reading-rooms of rare-book libraries. Some settings for studying manuscripts are stately and intimidating, and others are endearingly informal. Access is a secret of initiates, and formulas for admission and the handling of manuscripts vary hugely from one repository to another. This is an aspect of the history of scholarship often entirely neglected.
-Christopher De Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
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