Yay! It’s the first week of Nonfiction November! The first prompt is your year in review in Nonfiction.

The first question – what was your favorite nonfiction book of the year – must be a trick question. Which month? What genre? What mood was I in? What problem was I trying to solve?

The second question is what nonfiction do you seem to always recommend? I’m going to make answering the first question easier on myself by combining it with the second. I am constantly telling people to read Emotional Agility by Susan David, Ph.D. Why? Because if you’re asking for a book recommendation, that’s a pretty good sign you’re human, and all humans should read this book. I have a few others for the “if you’re still breathing you need to read this” category, but this is my pick for 2017 (yes, yes, I know – published date was 2016. I’m counting from when *I* read it).

My next pick also falls under the “but I read it in 2017” rule and it’s Cal Newport’s Deep Work. I seriously love this book! And yes, I work in technology by day, and yes, I still find ways to implement his principles even when I can’t stay home from work for 2 months and just write. He’s so practical and inspirational that I find myself playing the audible file when I’ve had enough and want to feel like myself again.

My third pick that I was again late to the game in putting my eyes on is Scott Barry Kaufman’s Wired to Create. I listen to his podcast regularly and if I ever met him in person, he’s one of the people I’d have to run from because I would finally go mute or totally fangirl my embarrassing self all around him.While I don’t label myself as a “creative person”, I sometimes do some stuff that I think “whoa, where did that come from?” Kaufman’s book explains you don’t have to self identify as “a creative” to create the work you are passionate about. If nothing else, he shows how the line we draw between “creative” and “not so creative” is an illusion and how to step into more freedom to create (which I think is a better book title expect he’s a scientist and ‘wired’ is hot in sciency-books right now.

Speaking of sciency books, the next question for week 1 is what topic in nonfiction do you want to read more of this year and for me, I want to read more about the hard sciences. I’m more of a social sciences/ psychology/ self development reader myself but haven’t even read Radium Girls yet  <hangs head in shame>.  My first pick to fix this is A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra). Hell, with a title like that, they should have said “Leann this book is for you”. I will read it and report back if I find my mind for numbers in the pages. I also don’t read a lot of memoir and I feel like I’m missing out on good stories so I will find something that gets me interested (which is the hard part for a person who doesn’t like historical anything). Can we please invent the future memoir where someone writes about their past but my future?

Finally, the last question is what am I hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November. It should be obvious: a regular blogging schedule! I will post to my Instagram (#bookstagram) feed and Litsy 20 times more than I will blog. I really want to change that in 2018 so this is a great chance to get into the habit.

Post any books you think I should read below! Would love to hear from my new nonfiction friends!