August Books List

This month, I took part in a Goodreads challenge to just read non-fiction for the whole of August.  The idea was to explore outside of your usual reading comfort zone and perhaps learn something new in the process too.  I really enjoyed it, though I had to sneak in one fiction book!  I think I'll definitely make more of an effort to try and read at least one non-fiction book a month now.


1. Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach
A light and easy summer read following Alice Steinbach on her year of travelling alone.   In this book, she mainly talks about her visits to London, Paris, Oxford and Italy, commenting on the people she meets along the way and why she decided to take a year out from her busy life.  Well worth a read for her thoughts on Paris alone if you've ever fancied going.  [4/5]

2. Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Aleksievich
This has been one of the most emotional and harrowing books that I've ever read about the Chernobyl disaster.  It's a compilation of memoirs from survivors, their friends, and family etc, and some of the stories are just horrific.  But interwoven with the horror is a lot of hope, love and an unimaginable faith in humanity to pull through the very worst of times.  It's also very interesting from an environmental perspective too.  [4/5]

3. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell
Outliers is one of those non-fiction books that you can just pick up whenever and enjoy reading. Gladwell's writing style is laidback and accessible, and this whole book is full of interesting facts and stories about how people have become successful.

The first part of the book looks into the backgrounds of people such as Bill Gates and explains the circumstances and opportunities that they had, that got them to where they are today.  In this section Gladwell uses the simplest analogy to describe success:- The tallest tree in a forest comes from a hardy seed, but other factors like access to sunlight, not being eaten by animals or chopped down when young, help it to grow into the mighty tree that it is today.  So whilst successful people work really hard, there are certain doors that are opened to them which help them along their way, or they may simply have had the luck of being born in the right place at the right time.

The second part looks at cultural legacies and the importance of understanding them in relation to success.  For example, Gladwell explains that Asians are often better at maths than Westerners because they have a more logical counting system and so forth.  Certainly worth reading if you're interested in the sociology and history of success over the last century.  [5/5]

4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I snuck in a fiction book this month and decided to re-read The Bell Jar.  If you're already familiar with the works of Sylvia Plath then you'll know that her writing was very self-reflective on her ongoing struggles with depression and this novel was self-autobiographical.
The first time I read The Bell Jar I was about 16/17 and I remember it having such a profound effect on what I thought depression was and how I saw others perceiving it in different ways.  Re-reading it at 25 allows me to see it from a much different perspective and appreciate Plath's writing a lot more, and it always makes me sad that this was her only novel.  [4/5]

What have you been reading this month?  Do you read much non-fiction?

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