Literary Non-Fiction Books That Read Like Your Fictional Favorites
Non-fiction has long been stereotyped as boring, opinionated, and to some it can come off as self-centered. In the case that you find yourself believing those stereotypes, we’re here to show you the other side of non-fiction. Written sweetly with creative technique like your favorite fictional stories but holding true meanings of art, past decades, gruesome crime, culture, and more– literary non-fiction is here to pull you to the other side.
To find out more about where to start when stacking your piles of books with non-fiction, keep reading!
Just Kids By Patti Smith
Source: Goodreads
From music to art to film and books, the time period of the 60s and 70s artist scene has become somewhat of an infatuation among younger crowds today. If you are drawn towards fictional stories about artist communities in other decades or fictional themes highlighting the highs and lows of singers, photographers, and artistic communities in a different generation, try Just Kids by Patti Smith. The singer-songwriter herself takes us through New York City in the 60s and 70’s, not stopping short of anything interesting.
Based on her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and their stay at the Chelsea Hotel—you’ll find expressions of youth, love, ambition, self-discovery, and expression. In a review, The Guardian graciously writes, “this book brings together all the elements that made New York so exciting in the 1970s – the danger and poverty, the artistic seriousness and optimism, the sense that one was still connected to a whole history of great artists in the past.”
In COld Blood by Truman Capote
Source: Goodreads
Have you always been drawn to the darker side of literature? Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, crime fiction, rage, investigation, and all things under the umbrella of suspense. If you’ve found yourself flipping through the pages of those fictional themes, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is for you. The infamous non-fiction novel follows the murder of the Clutter family in a small Kansas town as Capote takes the reader through the investigation while showing a sensitive discernment to the misfortune of American violence, which is more prevalent than ever today. The notorious novelist displays the art that became known as New Journalism with In Cold Blood.
The WHite Album by Joan didion
Source: Goodreads
If the east coast in the 60s doesn’t interest you as much as the west, and reporting with a creative manner strikes a chord in you, The White Album by Joan Didion will be a quick literary nonfiction read. Alongside reporting on disorder, the rise of “The American Dream,” and the Manson’s, is Didion’s seamless literary technique and her presence in this ravishing decade. Her essays in The White Album place her in the center of the chaos heard about on every corner today. The New York Times highlights Didion and how her “attraction to trouble spots, disintegrating personalities and incipient chaos came naturally.”
The Glass Castle by Jeannette walls
Source: Good Reads
The struggles of alcoholism, parent-children dynamics, and childhood portrayed in a new light by Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle. If you found yourself immersed in the equal layers of whimsicality, pain, and inadequate childhood in books like Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens— Walls’ book, eventually adapted into a motion picture, may be the one for you.
The memoir highlights her strength and vulnerability through a childhood with an imaginative, but alcoholic father and an eccentric mother ignorant of reality. Alongside her siblings, Walls learned to raise herself while never quite shaking off the past. The words on the pages flow like a fictional tale that strikes a few tears and smiles along the way.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Source: Barnes & Noble
“Beautiful and lyrical celebration of the color blue. Related also to, well, feeling blue, out of loss,” a reader wrote in the reviews on Goodreads. In the form of poetry and lyrical prose, Maggie Nelson has brought the gift of Bluets a creative non-fiction piece with an affinity to the color blue. Suffering, love, loss, and friendship; there is not much Nelson doesn’t cover in this book. If you are looking for an easy, creative read on hard, sometimes incomprehensible topics— Bluets should be the first literary non-fiction you add to your bookshelf.
While there are countless literary non-fiction pieces out there– these are our favorites. There is no time like the present to broaden the genres on that ever-growing bookshelf of yours. Let us know in the comments if you have read or will be reading any of our 5 favorite literary non-fiction books!