It is that most glorious time of year: NonFiction November! I am unsure how many years this online event has been going on, but it’s one I always look forward to, as I know I will find some great new reads and some fun new book bloggers to follow.

This first week of NonFicNov26 is hosted by Heather, who blogs at Based on a True Story, and the prompt is: 

My Year in Nonfiction
What nonfiction books have you read this year?
What were your favorites?
Did you find yourself reading a particular category of nonfiction most often?

I tend to read more nonfiction than fiction, and 2026 was no exception. This year I have read a total of 26 nonfiction books (with two more underway). There is really no surprise as to the buckets my books fall into. I feel kind of like a broken record, but I read books about books, technology-related books, and then also had a catch-all stack.

Publishers are putting out some really fun books in the “books about books” category. You can geek out as much as you want with media nerds or just float along with another author/book lover. They’re all fun.

Each December/January I pick a big book to read, and Chernow’s Mark Twain was my pick at the beginning of this year. It wasn’t my favorite book I’ve read about Twain, but I enjoyed it.

Honestly, my favorite book out of this stack was Shut Up and Read by Jeannine A. Cook. I do not know what I was expecting, but this memoir of an inner-city indie bookstore/culture center/safe gathering space was inspiring and fun to read. I’ve read quite a few books by shop owners, and I’ve not read anything else like this one.

There were six books in my technology stack, and they all kind of speak to where I am with my thinking and feelings about digital services, tools, and platforms. The two books I reference most these days are Doctorow’s Enshittification, which is spot on with identifying why the web is so awful in so many ways these days, and then Gehl’s Move Slowly and Build Bridges, which is my favorite out of this bunch. 

I am a big fan of Mastodon and all of the Fediverse experiments being created. Gehl’s book did an excellent job explaining how it all got started, why it was started, who was involved, how the protocols and codes of conduct were developed, etc. It’s such a brilliant service and seems to offer real solutions to some of the worst problems of the internet. I want to go deep here about it all, but will keep this post book-focused. If you’re interested in social media and online culture, this is a good read. 

My catch-all pile was all over the place this year. I really enjoyed Murakami’s music book, and I am a sucker for anything Dorothy Parker, but my favorite from this stack is Pimento Cheese: The Southern Spread by Rebecca Lang.

Are we allowed to pick a cookbook as a favorite read? Hope so. I love pimento cheese, and this is a cookbook that has been needed for years. The photos are great, and the recipes cover a wide swath of foodie favorites. I mean look at that photo below – bread, pimento cheese, fried green tomato and bacon?! SO GOOD!

Right now, on my nightstand are The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men by Jon Ronson and Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built by Gayle Feldman (which is my ‘big book’ to read over the holidays).

How about you? If you blog, do a quick post and join the NonFicNov fun! Or if you’d like to just leave a comment, I’d love to know what your favorite nonfiction read was this year. I have decided that the internet is at its best when it’s being used by bookish people. Thank you for reading!

Here is the full list of all the books pictured above:

1. A Life Among Books by Andrew Norris
2. Book Collecting and the Search for Reality by Jack Matthews
3. The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love by Katie Da Cunha Lewin
4. What’s So Great About the Great Books by Naomi Kanakia
5. A Group of Londoners by E.V. Lucas
6. Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett’s Bookshop by Jeannine A. Cook
7. Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
8. Howards End is on the Landing: A year of reading from home by Susan Hill
9. A Degree of Mastery: A Journey through Book Arts Apprenticeship by Annie Tremmel Wilcox
10. Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-reum
11. Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency by Megan Garber
12. The Last Mixtape: Physical Media and Nostalgic Cycles by Seth Long
13. Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media by Robert W. Gehl
14. Mapmatics: A Mathematician’s Guide to Navigating the World by Paulina Rowinska
15. The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance by Aram Sinnreich
16. Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow
17. Absolutely on Music: Conversations by Haruki Murakami 
18. Pimento Cheese: The Southern Spread by Rebecca Lang
19. Constant Reader: The New Yorker Columns 1927–28 (McNally Editions) by Dorothy Parker
20. How To Write An Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee
21. Creating a Salon: The Magic of Conversations that Matter by Linda-Marie Barrett
22. On Sports by David Macfarlane
23. A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros
24. Who’s That Girl by Thea Glassman
25. History Matters by David McCullough
26. Molly by Blake Butler