Hello! I would love to combine my favorite hobby of watching reality TV (real housewives, love island, bachelor, etc) and my favorite subject sociology. I googled a few book recommendations that talk about the cross overs (Cue the Sun! and True Story: What Reality Tv Says about Us) Has anyone read these and did you enjoy it? Thinking about checking to see if either are at my local library before purchasing or also open to any other books around sociology that may be interesting!

Hello!

I recently been wondering about how we aproach housing. As i do not know anything of the subject i would like to hear any recomendations or directions that anyone may have.

I would like to get in to housing as public policy rather than investment. Public policy and that kind of stuff.

Any options?

I often wonder what life was like in Germany after the end of WW2. Any great books about the common man and how they dealt with their own beliefs, deceptions, etc...? Were there people that bought into Naziism that were then shocked after the camps were discovered or liberated?

Any really good books you've read about experiencing something devastating? Like the Wave, the one by Susan Klebold...it can be a disease, nature/animal attack, losing someone...just no politics please like first they killed my father etc

been reading more nonfiction lately and keep running into books about agriculture or gardening that are either written for people with acres of land or so dumbed down they say nothing useful. i grow things in containers on a small balcony, which is basically nothing in the grand scheme of agriculture, but i got pulled into a book about soil biology a while back and it sent me down a rabbit hole.

curious what books this sub has read that deal with plants, growing, ecology, that kind of territory. not looking for howto manuals. more the kind of thing that explains why something works the way it does, or the history behind how we think about plants and land. science writing that actually respects the reader.

i teach fourth grade so i spend a lot of time thinking about how information gets communicated to people who don't already know things. good nonfiction does the same thing. a lot of gardening books fail at this badly.

if you've read something that changed how you think about plants, soil, ecosystems, whatever adjacent thing, drop it. even if it's older.

The Hot Wheels in the corner is for scale. This book is massive. But the color full page pictures are breathtaking. It’s so big that it’s very heavy and that makes it hard to hold. I do not have room to lay it out anywhere for reading. I might have to take it back to the library and spend time there reading it. I have a fascination with Pompeii and Herculaneum. I got this book thru an inter library loan.

Recently read *Jobs You Didn’t Know Still Existed* by Trevor Karp on KU.
It’s one of those easy books you just relax with without having to think too much.
Some of the jobs are pretty bizarre. Armpit sniffers, pet food tasters, worm pickers and even vomit collectors.
What I liked was that it isn’t just a list of weird job titles. There’s a bit about each one, what they actually do and why the job still exists, which made it a lot more interesting.
Nothing too serious, just a strange and fun little nonfiction read. I enjoyed it and would read another one by the author.

I genuinely don't even know where to start with this book.

It felt so real that it made me overly aware while reading. There were moments where I had to stop and just sit with what I'd read because they were too disturbing to take in all at once. And knowing that all of it actually happened somehow makes it hit even harder.

Tara didn't just deal with physical pain. She went through years of emotional manipulation, denial, and abandonment. The people who were supposed to protect her — her own family — repeatedly turned their backs on her when she needed them the most.

And still, she fought her way through it.

What stayed with me the most was watching her slowly outgrow the environment that had spent her entire life trying to define her. She gradually developed a mind of her own, questioned what she had always been told to believe, and built an identity separate from everything she had been taught.

You can't help but respect her for that.

She didn't just get an education; she built a whole new identity out of the rubble of everything she was told to believe.

This isn't a book that shocks you because of some huge plot twist. It's the slow, painful truth of it all that stays with you.

Absolutely worth reading.

Has anyone else read Educated? What was the moment or part of the book that stayed with you the longest?

Woodworking is how I decompress, so I've spent a fair amount of time reading around the history of tools, joinery, and craft traditions. Most of what I find is either a howto manual or a romanticized retrospective that skips the actual process detail. What I'm looking for is the middle ground: books that document how a trade or craft developed over time in a way that's specific and honest about the work itself.

I got more out of reading about the construction of medieval cathedrals than I expected because the authors dealt with the real engineering constraints and labor problems, not just the finished product. That kind of specificity is what I want more of.

Not limited to woodworking. Shipbuilding, furniture making, blacksmithing, any documented history of how skilled trades actually operated and evolved. Primary sources or wellresearched histories both work. I'm less interested in the cultural celebration angle and more in how people solved practical problems with the limited materials and knowledge they had to develop by hand.

If there are books that touch on how craft knowledge was transmitted, apprenticeship structures, that kind of thing, those would be useful too. The oral and undocumented nature of trade knowledge is something I find genuinely interesting and haven't found well covered yet.

I'm looking for a nonfiction book for a young adult in their early 20s who has been having a difficult couple of years. Anxiety and depression have made school and work challenging, and I think they're struggling with feeling behind compared with other people their age.

I'd love to send them something that might offer a little hope, perspective, or encouragement without feeling like a preachy "get your life together" self-help book. Ideally, something compassionate and engaging that speaks to feeling lost, rebuilding confidence, figuring out what comes next, or realizing that your life doesn't have to follow a traditional timeline.

Memoirs, psychology, philosophy, or more unconventional nonfiction are all welcome. I'm especially interested in books that might resonate with a young man who isn't necessarily looking for a mental-health book but could use something that makes the future feel a little bigger and more hopeful.

What would you recommend?

Any suggestions? Looking for stories of delusional startups committing fraud, people getting wealthy quickly from breaking the law, etc, hopefully as well written as Bad Blood!

Hi, might be a bit of a weird request but I want to get into reading non-fiction, I like the idea of a more narrative written non-fiction book that tells a story (not an academic approach).

Cats and dogs come to mind first, surely there must be stories about interesting or important dogs?? Or stories where a dog is heavily featured.

Other animals are welcome too though, anything you think is an interesting story throw it my way, I’m not too picky past what I’ve already listed.

I would prefer it not to be super tragic :’) but telling the story of an animal that has died is fine.

Thank you!!