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Marie Kondo-ing Your Job and Elizabeth Holmes News

Hello and happy Friday, dear nonfiction readers! This week has been a flurry of activity in my personal and work lives. I’ve had meetings, trainings, author visits, and the chance to see the Broadway adaptation of Mean Girls during the touring company’s stop in the Twin Cities.

The Lady From the Black Lagoon cover imageThrough all of that, I’ve been able to sneak in a bit of time reading. I’m currently engrossed in The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara. It’s an amazing Hollywood history, with a very feminist slant that I am in love with. But I’m not going to say more though, since it’s one of my picks for next week’s episode of For Real.

This week’s nonfiction news is a bit of a hodge-podge – some new books, some awards, and a brief update on the trial of Elizabeth Holmes (grab some popcorn, this is gonna be so good). Onwards!

Marie Kondo is coming to your work! Her next book, coming out in April 2020, is titled Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life and will be co-written by management processor Scott Soneshein. Kondo announced the new book on Instagram, where she described it this way: “This book offers stories, studies and strategies to help you eliminate clutter and make space for work that really matters.” I’m cautiously curious about this one.

And just like that, the National Book Award finalists are out! NPR notes that none of the finalists in any of the five categories have won this award before, which is really exciting! The nonfiction list is great, I want to read all of the books on it. Winners will be announced on November 2.

Impeachment-themed reading lists are all over the place! This one from Barnes & Noble pulls together 11 books – from history to contemporary politics – that will help make sense of the process.

I promise I will always link to news about Elizabeth Holmes when I find it. Last week, Holmes made news when her attorneys requested to be removed from the case. According to their filing, the three lawyers haven’t been paid in a year and, “given Ms. Holmes’s current financial situation” they have “no expectation that Ms. Holmes will ever pay it for its services as her counsel.” LOLZ.

Michelle Obama is publishing a companion journal to her blockbuster, record-setting memoir, Becoming. The journal will feature “more than 150 inspiring questions and quotes that resonate with key themes in Mrs. Obama’s memoir and that are designed to help readers reflect on their personal and family history, their goals, challenges, and dreams, what moves them and brings them hope, and what future they imagine for themselves and their community.” That sounds pretty awesome.

The New York Times is changing the makeup of its bestseller lists, again. In the world of nonfiction, that means retiring the science- and sports-specific lists because, according to the Times, “the titles on those lists are frequently represented on current nonfiction lists.” I don’t really know that there’s much of an impact on readers with this change, but I am always a little bummed to see fewer ways to dive down into nonfiction books since there are so many that come out each week.

That’s all for this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim