Non-fiction books to get excited for

Reading fiction makes you more empathetic; it’s a scientific fact. Research has found that immersing ourselves in other people’s stories can increase our compassion and encourage good behaviour towards others. But who wants that? Sounds boring, imo! With that in mind, here are some very real life stories to immerse yourself in instead. Books to enjoy for the sake of enjoying them, without the pressure to become a better person once you’ve finished. Perfect. 

Tory Nation, Samuel Earle

Not a great year to be a Tory, is it! Can’t imagine it will get any better once Samuel Earle publishes Tory Nation, an eviscerating look back at the history of the party. It finishes with a deep dive into the last 13 years (yes, really that long!) of what the most annoying people you’ve ever encountered on Twitter would describe as a political “omnishambles”. Tory Nation is less a political book and more a mystery novel, an investigation diving into the reasons why the Conservatives have only suffered seven major defeats over the past 150 years. It untangles the riddle of the strange cognitive dissonance between the Tories’ bumbling, destructive political record and their inexplicable electoral success. The picture Samuel paints is of a political situationship in which the British public knows, deep down, how dire their long-term partner is, but rather than reaching out for an alternative that might disappoint them too (Labour), they simply stay faithful. Pre-order here.

Daddy Boy, Emerson Whitney

In September, Cipher Press – an indie imprint focusing on queer and trans authors – publishes Daddy Boy, a memoir about the protracted end of Emerson Whitney’s decade-long marriage to a professional dominatrix. In it, the author processes this huge life change by (what else) tagging along on a tornado-chasing tour across the US. The result is an exploration of masculinities, families, transness, weather, sex work, sex generally, and finding your own agency as a human.

Seventeen, Joe Gibson

When he was 17, memoirist Joe Gibson’s affair with a woman twice his age seemed like a fantasy come to life. But 30 years on, he’s able to reckon with the tangled web of coercion, sex and lies that was the reality of that affair, a product of complex grooming and shocking abuse of authority played out at one of Britain’s major private schools. Seventeen, the author’s debut, is a re-evaluation of abuse framed as love, but also captures the mood of the culture in which the affair with his teacher took place; 1992, Britpop, gap years, girls, the promise of adulthood without really understanding what adulthood means yet. It’s both nostalgic and prescient, looking back at the past while unpacking how much of the present is dictated by the legacy of deceit that at the end of the author’s adolescence. Pre-order here.

BFFs, Anahit Behrooz

Although our friendships, particularly female friendships, can be some of the most intense, intimate, meaningful experiences in our lives, it’s a sad fact that culturally we relegate those experiences to being inherently less important than our romantic attachments. Friendship might be important in childhood, we’re told, but as adults we’re supposed to find a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband or wife to build a family with and centre our lives around instead. BFFs is a book that challenges this long-held assumption, instead exploring the radical power of female friendships. Through a series of coming-of-age tales — pulling on examples from Toni Morrison to The Virgin Suicides, Elena Ferrante to Grey’s Anatomy – Anahit Behrooz recontextualises BFFdom as not lesser than family or romance, but instead a site of the most gratifying, important and loving relationships a person can have. Buy here.

Fans: A Journey Into the Psychology of Belonging, Michael Bond

Stans have kind of always had a reputation for being obsessive, horny weirdos. Some of that is justified! Most of it is misplaced. It’s this misplacement that Michael Bond takes on in his examination of the psychology of fandom. A science writer — his previous book, Wayfinding, explained how our mind orientates us and stops us getting lost — Michael takes a novel approach to stan culture, explaining it not through the lens of the internet but instead through the psychology of fandom itself. The result is a fascinating insight into why people come together in pursuit of something they love and the very real benefits it can bring to our lives. Buy here.

The Plague, Jacqueline Rose 

Too much optimism now, actually. Need to balance it out. The perfect thing for that? Thinking about death. It’s not as bleak as it sounds, though. In fact Jacqueline Rose’s The Plague, published in paperback by Fitzcarraldo Editions in June, is a collection of essays that help us deal with death and dying rather than fearing it and as a result, trying to never think about its inevitability. Instead of avoiding that foregone conclusion, these essays — which touch on everything from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine — encourage a radical respect of death as, if nothing else, a reminder of our equality as humans, which feels especially important in a world that grows less equal by the day. 

Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond 

Being poor is expensive. It’s especially expensive in the United States. In his new book, sociologist Matthew Desmond — who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for Evicted, which explored America’s housing crisis — investigates in Poverty, by America how it’s possible that one in seven Americans live below the poverty line, a line which hasn’t shifted in the last 50 years, and how scarcity can exist in a land of billions and billions of dollars. If it’s not a lack of resources, then surely we already know how to eliminate poverty. The hard part is getting us (at least, the richest and most powerful amongst us) to actually want to do so. Buy here.

Reach for the Stars, Michael Cragg

More fan culture? Okay, fine! Michael Cragg’s oral history is as close to the platonic ideal of true, distilled fandom as you can get in book format (it’s about the Spice Girls). Well, sort of anyway. It’s also about more than that. It’s about the technicolour rush of — retrospectively misguided — optimism that dominated the cultural landscape of the late 90s and early 00s. Using the Spice Girls as a jumping off point, it explores what is potentially the last great, deranged era of British pop. Pre-social media, peak talent show, defined by gender stratified industry plant boy and girlbands with bad dance routines and colour co-ordinated double denim stage outfits. Enough to make you nostalgic for Hear’Say and Busted. Enough to make you search out Craig David and Atomic Kitten’s biggest bangers. Buy here.

Saving Time, Jenny Odell

We all love wasting time. Think how much time you wasted reading this! Jenny Odell spent her first book teaching us How to Do Nothing, and now she’s back with Saving Time to teach us how to reclaim our time from the corporate world where, increasingly, time means money. To do so, she argues, we need to completely rethink how we understand our own time; to prioritise people and quality interactions over contorting ourselves to work by the corporate clock. It might feel inconceivable, but there once was a world beyond influencers teaching us how to maximise the 5-9 before our 9-5s. Buy here.