While I read a lot in 2025, nonfiction only accounted for 23% of my reads. Not as many to pick from, but still some good ones.

You can also check out my top 10 fiction and my reading stats/goals.

1. Everybody Writes: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley – Really solid and meaty writing advice. Used it with my intern this summer.
2. A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings – I thought this would be one of those windows into extremism, but it felt way too close too home.
3. Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis – Essential reading for a time when government workers are under attack.
4. You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi – Another incredibly practical book for writers. Longer than it needs to be (reprinted blog posts), but still good stuff.
5. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen – In-depth and frightening.
6. Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding A True Faith by April Ajoy – More of the church/politics embrace that hits too close to home.
7. Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy by Bill Adair – Intriguing and depressing.
8. The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Christopher Hayes – Really interesting take, though the author goes a little too far down the rabbit hole on some of his tangents.
9. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder – Inspiring stories and narrative flow. Pretty much anything Tracy Kidder writes is worth a read.
10. Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders – More writing advice, though this one is very specific nuts and bolts for fiction writers, so less appealing for me. But I hadn’t read anything this practical before.

Honorable Mentions

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond – Really detailed investigative reporting about landlords and renters and poverty. It’s pretty depressing, but gives real insight.
• How to Resist Amazon and Why: The Fight for Local Economics, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores, and a People-Powered Future! by Danny Caine – Not the best written book—the arguments often feel too hyperbolic. But I mention it because I think it’s time we wrestle with mega-corporate greed. Danny Caine’s other book highlighting independent bookstores is more positive and better, but this gives some of the foundation about why Amazon is a problem.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

I read 184 books in 2023 and here are my favorite nonfiction reads.

I normally don’t read a lot of nonfiction (only 18% of my reading in 2022), so this is usually a shorter list. But I went on a memoir spree and found a ton of good ones—with nonfiction hitting 43% of my reading!

So this year we get a top 10 list:

1. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley – I listened to the audiobook and was initially put off by the author’s monotone, but once I got into the groove it was really compelling. Extremely well written, to the point that I want to read it again in print so I can underline the morsels.
2. Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More With Less by Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz – The best book on writing I’ve read in years. I keep buying copies for my contributors.
3. Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate by Justin Lee – The best book I’ve read on the gay debate in the church.
4. Rapture Practice: My One-Way Ticket to Salvation by Aaron Hartzler – This growing up in a Christian subculture memoir hit way too close to home.
5. Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride – This one made me cry.
6. Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home in Rural America by Ayaz Virji with Alan Eisenstock – Really incredible story.
7. A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney – The story of his son dying, which is just awful, but it’s poignant and honest in that “well, fuck” kind of way.
8. I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times by Monica Guzmán – We need more of this if our democracy is going to survive.
9. Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House by Cliff Sims – As much as I dislike Trump, I’m not a fan of the tell-all books gushing with juicy details. But the Smart Brevity guys referenced this one, so I checked it out, and the style was super engaging.
10. When They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele – I put this one off for a while, but glad I finally got to it.

Honoroable Mentions

And a few more worth mentioning:

• Birding While Indian by Thomas C. Gannon – Really enjoyed this mix of Indian politics and birding, which clued me into the gamification of birding, something I found intriguing (who knew I’d enjoy keeping lists?!).
• Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation by Jon Ward – I read several deconstruction memoirs and this one was perhaps the most interesting.
• Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World by John Hope Bryant – Business books are often awful, but this one really engaged.

Note on Trends

I noted last year that I read a couple LGBTQ+ memoirs and enjoyed them and would probably do more this year. I did. A lot. Three of those made it to my top 10, and I read a bunch more. The Christian ones were the most intriguing, which led to a related field of deconstruction memoirs. By the end of the year I stumbled into birding memoirs, and that pushed me to spend Christmas money on binoculars and start exploring birding.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

You can also see this year’s top 10 fiction and reading stats for the year.

I read 87 books in 2022, and here’s my favorite nonfiction reads. I don’t read very much nonfiction (16 out of 87, so 18%), so it usually has to be something I’m really interested in. And this year I struggled through several 2-star books (and even a 1-star book).

1. Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story by Julie Rodgers – A fascinating and difficult memoir about being gay in the church. From conversion therapy to excommunication, it’s not exactly joyful reading. But necessary.
2. Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed (Nearly) Everything I Know by Tom Rademacher – Billed as a parenting nonbinary kids memoir, it’s more about raising unique kids and being a teacher and trying to deal with all the crap our culture throws at us.
3. Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono – A few hundred pages too long, this memoir is at times insightful and at times self indulgent (but what do you expect from a rock star).
4. United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good by Cory Booker – Talk about self indulgent, that’s the definition of a politician memoirs. However, Booker manages to be humble. He’s always admitting mistakes and giving credit to others.
5. All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson – As nutjobs try to ban books left and right, this one is frequently in the crosshairs. For no good reason. If you’re not gay, you probably have no idea what LGBTQ folks go through as they come of age. That’s why we need books like these.

On that note, definitely a theme this year with my LGBTQ nonfiction. Might keep it up in 2023 as I just picked up Danica Roem’s Burn the Page from the library.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

I read 71 books last year and here are my favorite nonfiction reads of 2021.

I don’t get through much nonfiction these days, so when I do tackle one, it’s because I really want to read it.

1. It Is What You Make of It: Creating Something Great From What You’ve Been Given by Justin McRoberts – Sort of a book about the creative process, but really it’s just good stories.
2. Becoming Better Grownups: Rediscovering What Matters and Remembering How to Fly by Brad Montague – A great book for anyone looking for hope in the world and any person who creates things for a living.
3. Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman – Poetry in my top five? Yikes—clearly I’m desperate. But seriously, there are a few really good poems and several just masterful turns of phrase.
4. Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubled Times by Michael Curry – The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church—everybody knows him as the guy who preached at the royal wedding—offers a needed refocus on love and breath of fresh air.
5. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer – A really detailed dive into the history of American Indians after the Wounded Knee massacre, filling in a lot of political realities most of us overlook.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.