I’ve just created this community for the discussion of nonfiction books but essays, short pieces etc. Are welcome. Write a little about yourself and the sort of nonfiction you read below.
Hi, I’m a full stack dev at work who likes to read nonfiction (but also scifi and fantasy, although that’s offtopic here) as one of the many hobbies. I don’t have a specific nonfiction genre I’m interested in, I usually read stuff that I find interesting in a particular moment, although I tend towards science, politics and a little bit of self-help.
Some of my favourites nonfiction books are “Atomic habits” by James Clear, “The Dictator’s Handbook” by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.
Welcome! I feel like a lot of techies are into that genre mix!
Thanks a lot for the welcome! :)
Science and self-help are becoming a little tricky though, because lots of popular books, especially in social and behavioural sciences and pop science, are affected by the replication crisis.
I also have discovered a podcast where they debunk some parts of some books (or the whole book if it is very controversial): it is called “If Books Could Kill” (if you are interested, you may find it wherever you listen to podcast; I personally use PocketCasts). They already have done an episode on “Freakonomics” (which I read a year ago) and on the 15th of June they have released an episode on “Atomic Habits” (also read a year ago); I will definitely listen to what they have to say about it, hoping that they will not “destroy” the whole book ahahahah
Interesting about the replication crisis I hadn’t heard a name put to it before. For science I know that popular nutrition books constantly contradict each other (eg. Vegan is ideal Vs carnivore Vs Mediterranean etc.) which is a lot down to the difficulty in (re)producing nutrition studies so authors are able to cherry pick from a handful of studies for their desired result. I’m definitely interested in checking out that podcast.
