Since my life is still fairly chaotic thanks to our continued home remodeling as well as just, you know, stuff, weekly Top Ten Tuesday posts seem to be about all I can handle here at BBB. I'm hoping the remodel will be done by the end of this month and life will get back to normal. In the meantime, here's a little peek to show you how good things are looking:

I'm really happy with how the remodel is going, although I'm impatient for it all to be done, of course. 

Anyway, back to TTT. I missed last week because my husband and I were in the mountains celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. It was a nice little getaway, but I was bummed to miss a fun TTT topic so I'm going to do that one instead of this week's, which is: Top Ten Books I Received for Review That I Loved So Much I Bought a Copy for My Personal Library. That's a mouthful! Instead, I'm going with the School Freebie from last week. I really wanted to make a list of books set in haunted schools, but I couldn't come up with five titles let alone ten, so I'm going for a less fun but still interesting (to me at least) theme—Top Ten Non-Fiction Titles I Want to Read. Since I'm such a fiction addict, non-fiction books feel educational to me, and educational = school, so yeah, here we go:

1. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe—My friend is in the middle of this one and she was telling me last night how intriguing she's finding it. It's about the Sacklers, the family "famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin." Definitely sounds like a compelling read!

2. The Woman They Could Not Silence: The Shocking Story of a Woman Who Dared to Fight Back by Kate Moore—The same friend who recommended #1 suggested this one for our next book club discussion. It tells the story of Elizabeth Packard, a wife and mother whose husband had her committed to an insane asylum when he started feeling too threatened by her opinions and intellect. Her unwillingness to back down led to advances in women's rights and the freedom of other women who were institutionalized against their will.

3. My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair—As the subtitle indicates, this memoir is about a Black woman who discovers her grandfather was Amon Goeth, a ruthless Nazi commandant who was executed for his brutal war crimes. The discovery throws her into a deep depression and causes her to question many things about her family and heritage.

4. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede—I've heard excellent things about this book, which tells the story of how a small town welcomed thousands of stranded jetliner passengers with open arms when their planes were forced to land in Gander on September 11, 2001.

5. The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman—Just looking at the cover of this book makes me nostalgic for my teenage years! Sounds like a super fun read starring a unique decade in history.

6. In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado—Even though I have no interest in mountain climbing myself, I still find memoirs about scaling Mt. Everest and other giants absolutely fascinating. This one is about a woman struggling with the challenges of her own life and her experience leading a group of novice climbers on a harrowing trip up Everest. 

7. Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases by Paul Holes—Although I used to be a big true crime fan, I've read little of it in recent years. Still, this memoir by the detective who found the Golden State Killer sounds interesting. 

8. Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them by Neil Bradbury—Speaking of true crime, this is another title that sounds really intriguing to me.

9. Overdue: Reckoning With the Public Library by Amanda Oliver—I've always loved libraries, so this book sounds right up my alley. The author recounts her experiences working as a librarian in impoverished areas of Washington, D.C., and what she learned about the evolving role public libraries serve.

10. Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James—James' job as an admissions officer who specialized in bringing diversity to elite prep schools caused her to reflect on her own tumultuous experience as the first Black legacy student at The Taft School. 

There you go, ten non-fiction books I want to read. Have you read any of them? What did you think? Which NF titles are on your TBR list? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

Back in November, I published a Top Ten Tuesday post about my macabre love for stories about maritime disasters. Lark recommended Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew by Brian Hicks as one I might enjoy. Lark never steers me wrong, so I eagerly sought out a copy of the book. I'd heard of the Mary Celeste, vaguely, but really didn't know her story, which goes a little something like this:

Originally named Amazon, the Mary Celeste was a 100-foot long brigantine built in Nova Scotia in 1860-61. "A simple but handsome sailing ship" (19), she was designed to carry cargo and be manned by a small crew. Some believe the craft was cursed from the start as she seemed to have more than the usual number of mishaps over the course of her lifetime. Bedeviled or not, the ship became widely known in 1872. Rechristened as Mary Celeste in 1869, it was chartered in 1870 by a German businessman to carry 1700 barrels of industrial alcohol from New York City to Genoa, Italy. Captain Benjamin Briggs, who would be at the helm, brought his wife and their 2-year-old daughter along on the journey. Seven crewmen were also aboard when the craft left New York Harbor on November 5. About a month later, the ship was spotted floating aimlessly in the middle of the North Atlantic by the crew of the Dei Gratia. No one was steering the craft. Nor was anyone on board. Such "ghost ships" were seen fairly frequently on the high seas for a variety of reasons. What made this one different was that no one who had been on board was ever heard from again. A variety of strange things—like the fact that all of the men's foul weather gear, which would have been worn if they abandoned ship in a vicious storm, was still on the Mary Celeste—gave rise to theories of every kind. Had there been a mutiny on board? Did pirates descend on the ship, killing everyone in sight? Was it all an elaborate insurance scam? Could it have been aliens? Sea monsters? A Bermuda Triangle-ish disappearance? What really occurred to those ten doomed souls?

Ghost Ship is a fascinating book about an intriguing unsolved mystery. Hicks offers a compelling, well-researched account of the incident, including both the known facts and the fictions that grew out of the strange tale. His emphasis on the ship's captain and his seafaring family makes the story especially intimate and personal. I also thought the sections about how the tale of the Mary Celeste changed over the years and became part of supernatural/Bermuda Triangle/alien lore were especially interesting. Because of all these elements and more, I found Ghost Ship to be an engrossing, well-told tale that kept me eagerly turning pages. 

(Readalikes: I've read a lot of books about maritime disasters, but never one about a real mysterious, unsolved maritime mystery, so I'm not sure what to compare this one to. Any ideas?)

To the FTC, with love: Another library fine find

Everyone who visits BBB regularly knows I love a gripping, immersive survival story. If it's true? Even better. As we all well know, not everyone in the infamous Donner Party lived to tell the group's grisly tale, but enough did that we have a pretty good idea of what happened that fateful winter in 1847

when they became stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While cannibalism is what they became known for, there is a lot more to their story. Who were the people in the Donner Party? Where were they headed? How did they lose their way and become perilously trapped in the snow? Why did they resort to eating the flesh of their family members and friends? If you can stomach the more macabre details, theirs is a truly fascinating story. Daniel James Brown tells it well in his engrossing account, The Indifferent Stars Above.

Brown became interested in researching the Donner Party when he discovered he was distantly related to one of its members, a young woman named Sarah Graves Fosdick. She accompanied her parents, her eight younger siblings, and her new husband on the journey from Illinois to California. Brown decided to use her viewpoint to tell the stories of a group of travelers whom he says "deserve better" than to be remembered only as clichéd pioneers who were forced to make a horrible, desperate choice in order to survive an utterly hopeless situation. Brown describes the whole tragedy from beginning to end in a manner that is sensitive, compelling, and illuminating. With all the elements that make for great fiction—an extreme setting, interesting characters, nail-biting tension, and constant conflict of multiple varieties—it's a riveting read. Narrative non-fiction at its best.

I need more happy reads in my life because prompts like today's—Top Ten Books Guaranteed to Put a Smile On Your Face—always leave me scratching my head.  Although I do like a fun cozy mystery as well as humorous characters, I just don't read very many smiley kinds of books.  I did manage to come up with ten for February's list of Top Ten Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud and that was tough enough.  So, I'm going rogue once again.  As promised last week when I listed the Top Ten Best Novels I've Read So Far This Year, this week I'm going to give you the non-fiction version.  Today's list was a much easier one to put together because I've only read, ahem, nine non-fiction books in 2021.  Luckily, all of them were excellent.  I am going to include the one I DNF'd as well because I only ditched the audio—I want to read the book instead of listen to it because I was missing too much by just listening.  

Want to join in the TTT fun?  Hop on over to That Artsy Reader Girl for all the details.

- in no particular order -

1.  The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Story of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown—I know, I know, it's weird to want to read about the Donner Party, but I've long been a fan of pioneer stories and survival tales.  This one is both.  It's also about a lot more than cannibalism.  Brown does an excellent job telling the epic story in all its tragic horror, without sensationalizing the truly horrific bits.  It's a fascinating account of a terrible journey.

2.  Atomic Habits by James Clear—I loved this self-help book about how to make goals attainable.  Clear gives some great advice on not only how to set reachable goals, but also how to break bad habits.

3.  The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman—I just reviewed this absorbing book about the jaw-dropping number of people who go missing every year in North America's federal lands.  Why do they vanish?  And what is being done to find them?    

4.  A Girl From Yamhill by Beverly Cleary—Did your childhood reading life revolve around Beverly Clearly?  Mine did.  This first volume of the author's autobiography provides an interesting look at Cleary's growing-up years and how they informed both her character and her writing.

5.  American Baby by Gabrielle Glaser—I've always been fascinated by adoption stories, even before becoming an adoptive mother myself.  This book uses the story of an unwed mother who placed her child for adoption in the 1960s as a vehicle to explore how poorly such women were treated, not just by the system but by society and their own families.  It's a heartbreaking, eye-opening, thought-provoking read.

6.  The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest by Mark Synnott—This book tells the story of Synnott's Mount Everest expedition, which focused not on summitting the mountain but on finding a lost piece of Everest history.  This is a more academic study of Everest than most and yet, I found it just as interesting (although much slower) than Jon Krakauer's popular Into Thin Air.

7.  The Answer Is... by Alex Trebek—I was surprised to discover that this book is actually quite light and funny.  It's less of an autobiography and more of a rumination on a life well lived.

8.  Dead Wake by Erik Larson—Disaster books are another of my weird reading likes.  This one, about the sinking of the Lusitania during World War I, made for a really interesting read (listen, actually, as I enjoyed it on audio).

9.  The Lost Family by Libby Copeland—Genealogy is another of my big interests, so I couldn't resist this book about how DNA testing is changing our ideas of family, nature vs. nurture, privacy, and so on.  It's riveting!

10.  Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing—Like I said, I started listening to this book on audio, but I kept having to rewind it to catch parts I missed.  Since I didn't want to miss a word, I decided to pick it up in book form instead.  

Have you read any of these?  What did you think?  What are the best non-fiction books you've read this year?  I'd truly love to know.  Leave a comment on this post and I'll gladly return the favor on your blog.

Happy TTT!       

Did you know that each year in the United States about 600,000 people go missing?  Most vanish in populated places.  The majority of them are found alive and in a short amount of time.  While these statistics are comforting in a way, the one Jon Billman is concerned about is this—around 1600 people are currently missing from North America's public lands (including national parks, national forests, and BLM land).  And this, Billman says, is likely a vast understatement.  For various reasons, hundreds go missing on federal land every year; many are never found.  

In The Cold Vanish, the writer uses the story of Jacob Gray (link contains spoilers)—a 22-year-old from California who disappeared in Washington's Olympic Peninsula while on a solo bicycling trip—as a springboard to explore these disappearing acts.  Who is most likely to vanish on public land?  Why?  And what is being done to locate the missing?  Billman discusses obstacles to finding people in the wild (vast acreage, inclement weather, difficult terrain, bureaucratic red tape, etc.) as well as the lengths that volunteers (including a group of dedicated Bigfoot hunters) have gone to to find missing hikers, bicyclers, and explorers.  Since so many of the circumstances surrounding these disappearances are strange, even inexplicable, Billman also talks about the more out-there explanations embraced by some: aliens, Sasquatch, and other otherworldly explanations.  The levity of this discussion is over-balanced, however, by those about how a missing persons investigation affects the family and friends who are left behind with no answers and no closure.  It's heartbreaking. 

Although there has apparently been a bit of a hubbub over Billman's portrayal of Jacob Gray, including some "facts" of the case that Billman may have gotten wrong, I found his coverage of Jacob's case to be both sensitive and absorbing.  On the whole, The Cold Vanish is very informative, compulsively readable, and highly compelling.  Also, sad and disturbing.  Although I read the book quickly, what I learned has stayed with me.  Haunted me.  My biggest takeaway: always maintain a healthy respect for Mother Nature, which will kill you just as soon as cradle you.  When exploring, stay on established paths, don't venture out alone, take a cell phone, and always—always—be prepared with emergency supplies.  Not doing any one of these, as Billman so clearly points out, can be deadly.

*Thanks to Lark for recommending this book to me.  You can see her excellent review of The Cold Vanish here.

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of books by Jon Krakauer, especially Into the Wild, as well as Carried by Michelle Schmidt and Angie Taylor)

To the FTC, with love:  Another library fine find

First off, congratulations to Cheri, who won my 15th Blogoversary Giveaway for a free book.  Enjoy your prize!  Thank you to her and to all of you for being loyal readers of BBB.  I appreciate it more than you could possibly know.

Today's TTT topic is Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time.  It's a fine prompt, but one that is just not inspiring me today.  Time to go rogue?  Yes, yes it is.  

I've always been a lover of fiction, with little to no interest in reading non-fiction.  Occasionally, an inspiring self-help title would catch my eye or I'd dive into a biography of a fascinating person, but for the most part, it was all fiction, all the time.  Lately, though, I've developed a growing appreciation for narrative non-fiction because, you know, if I'm going to read non-fiction I want it to at least read like fiction!  I've especially enjoyed listening to these types of books on audio while I drive or do housework.  In an effort to find more great titles in this genre, I'm going to share my favorite examples and ask you to recommend yours.  Deal?  

Before we get to that, though, I have to give a shout-out to our host.  Click on over to That Artsy Reader Girl to learn more about TTT and to give Jana some love!

Top Ten Favorite Non-Fiction Books That Read Like Fiction   

1.  Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer—I've read a couple books by this author, but this one is my favorite by far.  It details Krakauer's harrowing climb up Mount Everest during a terrible storm in May 1996 that killed five people.  The riveting account is replete with Everest history, lore, and firsthand knowledge of what it's like to scale the beast.

2.  Dead Wake by Erik Larson—I just finished listening to this book on audio.  It tells the story of the Lusitania's last voyage, explaining how and why it sank.  Larson makes the tragedy personal by featuring various passengers and their experiences on board.  It's fascinating!

Speaking of Larson, a lot of people rave about his The Devil in the White City, which is about a serial killer who preyed on women during the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.  While the story is intriguing, I couldn't stomach the grisly details and had to stop listening.  I do plan to read his other, less disturbing books, however. 

3.  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand—Another engrossing read, this one recounts the experiences of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner turned World War II soldier.  He experienced so much heartache and trauma during the war that it really is a miracle he survived.  This is an inspiring read on many levels.

4.  The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin—Lark from Lark Writes...on Books and Life recommended this one, which describes a freak storm that occurred in the Midwest in 1888 right as schoolkids were being let out for the day.  The unexpected blizzard wreaked deadly havoc on a lot of unprepared people, many of whom were children.  It's a sad read, but a gripping one.

5.  Columbine by Dave Cullen—This is another sad one, but it's also a fascinating and illuminating recounting of the horrific school shooting.  Very thought-provoking.

6.  The Lost Family by Libby Copeland—As a family history fanatic, I love learning about genealogical research, DNA, nature vs. nature, adoption, and many other related topics.  This book uses the story of a woman who got unexpected results back from a DNA test to ask probing questions about who we are and how our genetics and biological families affect our identities.

7.  Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand—By the author of Unbroken, this may have been the first book I read that really qualifies as narrative non-fiction.  Even though I know nothing about horses and horse racing, I found it to be a very compelling read.

8.  The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming—Like many people, I'm intrigued by the mystery of Anastasia Romanov.  This book discusses the murder of her family and the circumstances that led up to it.  Fleming uses real letters to contrast the Romanovs' luxurious lives with those of the common Russian during that period, making for an especially thought-provoking read about the lives of this royal family.

9.  The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman—Lark and I share an affinity for survival stories set in remote locations, so I get all kinds of great recommendations—like this one—from her.  This book talks about the many people who go missing from America's national parks every year and what's being done to bring them home.  It's a fascinating read.

10.  The Third Pole by Mark Synnott—Okay, this one's a cheat because I just started this book today.  It's riveting, though, so I predict it will become a favorite.  The book talks about Synnott's expedition to Mount Everest in 2019 in which he and his team hoped to find the camera George Mallory and Sandy Irvine purportedly had on them when they died trying to summit the mountain in 1924.  If photographic evidence exists, it could prove that they were actually the first to top Mt. Everest via the North Col, not the Chinese team who famously did it in 1960. 

There you have it, ten narrative non-fiction reads that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Have you read any of them?  Which non-fiction-that-reads-like-fiction books have you loved?  Which would you recommend?  I'm especially interested in those that explore historical disasters, natural or otherwise.  True crime is too much for me, unless it's of the less-graphic variety.

Happy TTT!      

The death of Alex Trebek—long-time host of the trivia game show Jeopardy!—saddened all of his fans, including me.  I'm not the kind of person who cares much about celebrity gossip or Hollywood tell-alls, but I have wanted to read Trebek's memoir, The Answer Is..., ever since I first heard about it.  Since I'm always looking for entertaining audiobooks, I decided to listen to this one.  I'm glad I did, as it made me smile to listen to Trebek's antics told in his own voice, which is so familiar and soothing.  While the majority of the book is narrated by Ken Jennings, Jeopardy! champion and Trebek's successor on the show, I most enjoyed the portions voiced by Trebek himself.

Because Trebek has always projected such a serious, straight-laced persona on television and because he was dying as he wrote The Answer Is..., I expected the book to be a somber text full of deep, philosophical reflections on life and death.  It's not.  With an "It's all good" vibe throughout, the memoir is actually quite light and funny.  Told in short vignettes taken from Trebek's career and personal life, it's a fast read (or listen, in my case) full of humor and simple, down-home wisdom like these nuggets:

If you hang out here at BBB with any regularity, you know that I'm an adoptive mom as well as an avid genealogist.  I'm so into family history, in fact, that I'm currently working on becoming accredited as a professional genealogist in two regions: U.S. Southwest and U.S. Great Lakes.  COVID has slowed the process, but I'm hoping to finish my testing this year.  I'm not a big tv watcher (I'd rather read, thank you very much!); however, I have been known to binge-watch shows like Finding Your Roots, Genealogy Roadshow, Relative Race, and Who Do You Think You Are?.  I've been quietly researching my adopted daughter's birth family's genealogy since she was born.  Bottom line?  I go nuts over anything related to family history: research, DNA, adoption reunions, family heirlooms, passed-down stories, etc.  Given all that, I was immediately drawn to The Lost Family by Libby Copeland.  How could I resist a book that promised to tick off so many of my favorite reading boxes? 

The book tells the story of Alice Collins Plebuch, a woman who took a DNA test that returned results that were unexpected and perplexing.  To say the least.  The confusing information led her on a journey that required painstaking research, uncomfortable questions, and an almost complete overhaul of everything she knew about herself and her family.  Copeland uses Plebuch's incredible story as a framework for discussing the relatively new technology of DNA home-testing, which allows anyone to spit in a tube, upload very personal information to a very public forum, and share all the secrets hiding in their genes with the world.  While doing so has led to joyous reunions between biological family members, answers to heart-wrenching questions, and even the bringing to justice of the Golden State Killer, they've also been the catalyst for broken hearts, renewed feelings of abandonment, privacy breaches, and the revelation of long-buried secrets that maybe should have been kept that way.  Copeland poses some deep, thought-provoking questions on the subject like: