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True Story

Spring 2018 Memoirs and Biographies, Plus Biographies on Audio

We’re giving away a stack of our 20 favorite books of the year. Click here to enter, or just click the image below.


In case you missed it, I’ll share the news again – Book Riot’s Read Harder 2018 Challenge is alive! I was happy to see that a lot of the tasks could be completed with a work of nonfiction, but there are a few that I’m particularly excited about – a book of true crime, a celebrity memoir, a book of social science, and an essay anthology. One of my reading goals for 2018 is to actually finish Read Harder, so expect to hear a bit more about that as the year progresses.

Nonfiction News!

Publisher’s Weekly put together a list of spring 2018 memoirs and biographies. There are several good ones in their top ten including a new book from one of my favorite essayists, Leslie Jamison (Recovering, out April 3 from Little Brown).

This week, Ta-Nehisi Coates did what many of us wish we were strong enough to do – delete his Twitter account. According to Entertainment Weekly, Coates was in the middle of a debate with a fellow intellectual, Cornel West. It does seem like that kind of discussion has a better platform than Twitter.

Electric Literature put out their best nonfiction of the year list, which also looks excellent. A few of the heavy-hitters are on there, there are also a few quirkier books that haven’t popped up on other lists so far. Check it out!

Book Riot Links!

Carina Pereira shares some of the excellent biographies she listened to on audio this year – I’ve got quite a few of them on my list!

Holiday party season is almost over, but this list of seven nonfiction books to make you sound smart at parties by Molly Wetta is worth bookmarking for later.

Rebecca Hussey put together a list of the best genre-bending nonfiction of the year, several of which weren’t on my radar at all.

Kate Scott’s round-up of 24 amazing feminist books coming in 2018 is mostly nonfiction, and all of it sounds incredible.

Ready to make 2018 your year? Raych Krueger suggests self-help audiobooks to help you “untrash” 2018.

Cheap Books!

There are some excellent Kindle deals this month for nonfiction lovers. A few that I’ve read and can wholeheartedly recommend are

And don’t forget! Book Riot is giving away 20 of our favorite books of the year, pulled from the votes in our Best Books of 2017 list. Readers of this newsletter will probably be excited about Hunger by Roxane Gay, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul, The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie. Click here to enter!

And with that, I’m signing off for 2017. Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts this year. I’m looking forward to 2018!

– Kim Ukura, @kimthedork