2015 National Book Award Nonfiction Longlist

Looking for excellent nonfiction to read? Try some of these books on the 2015 National Book Award Longlist for Nonfiction.

Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett

The ability to write about something common in a fascinating way is a skill and Cynthia Barnett uses her skill in this book that combines well-researched science with the everyday effect rain has and has had on humans.  If you enjoyed other microhistories like Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, or Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History, take a look at Barnett's book.



Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes for The Atlantic and Between the World and Me is his second book. Written as a letter to his son, he writes about what it is to be black in America today. James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time inspired this fiercely personal yet universal work.







Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann

In this intimate memoir, Sally Mann takes old and new photographs and combines them with her memories of loved ones to create an amazing book that speaks of family, history, and her Southern heritage.







The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery's friendship with an octopus was the catalyst for this book. Montgomery studied octopi in aquariums and the sea and came to see that they, not unlike humans, have personalities and can be playful and intelligent. If this book interests you, you should also check out her book The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood, the story of a pig that won over her heart and the heart of the small town in which she lived.


The other titles on the Longlist are Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes; Paradise of the Pacific by Susanna Moore; Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays by Michael Paterniti; If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power; Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith; and Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir by Michael White.

Books and Movies: Black Mass by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill

Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill is the story of John Connolly and James "Whitey" Bulger. The pair knew each other when they were children and grew up to take different paths (Connolly becoming an FBI agent and Bulger becoming a career criminal) until they met again when Bulger became an FBI informant. While working together to dismantle the Italian mafia in Boston, their plans lead to multiple murders, drug dealing, and racketeering and they both, eventually, (Bulger was able to evade capture for 16 years) end up in prison.

The intriguing, crime-filled lives of Whitey Bulger and John Connolly are perfect for a movie so of course, one was made. Black Mass opens in theaters tomorrow, September 18, and has a great cast, including Johnny Depp as Bulger, Joel Edgerton as Connolly and, Benedict Cumberbatch as Bulger's brother Bill. Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, and Adam Scott also star.

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Staff Review: H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald is one intense book: grief-intensive, nature-intensive, language-intensive, and raptor-intensive, just for starters. Its genesis was the unexpected death of the author's father, a vibrant newspaper photographer with whom MacDonald shared a close and sympathetic relationship all her life. Indeed he sounds like an exceptional dad. MacDonald learned to love nature right by his side and accompanied him on expeditions, such as his personal project to photograph every bridge over the River Thames. Receiving news one day of his sudden death by heart attack, MacDonald is devastated. She doesn't recover for months.

For at that point in her life, she feels she has nothing: no partner, no kids, no permanent job, no house.  She's winding up a fellowship and will soon be jobless and homeless (in the less urgent sense of the latter term). MacDonald is no ordinary woman though: she is a writer, poet, naturalist, historian, research scholar, and falconer, falconry having been a mad passion since childhood.

In an attempt to deal with her overwhelming grief, MacDonald acquires a hawk -- and not just any hawk, but a goshawk, notoriously the most difficult and murderous of raptors -- and raises Mabel the Hawk to be her wild companion. Her narrative of their time together is interspersed with memories of her father and with a biographical sketch of the writer T. H. White, a tortured man, avid falconer, and author of The Once and Future King, a series of books about King Arthur. H Is for Hawk moves back and forth between MacDonald's life and White's, the two linked by their love of hawks and their hope for healing through their birds. The extensive White passages may wear on some readers.

The story of MacDonald's training of Mabel is compelling; the author becomes almost feral herself in her attempt to drown her grief in the hawk's wildness. MacDonald's writing is dazzling: unbelievable, really, the freshest, most original I've encountered in ages. Reading the book you feel the author has never met a cliché, never witnessed anything through any eyes but her own.

H Is for Hawk won the Costa Book Award for 2014 (formerly known as the Whitbread Prize, with a £30,000 purse) and the Samuel Johnson Prize (worth  £20,000) for nonfiction. The awards are well-deserved but the author's intensity began to wear on me just a bit by the end, as did the murderous intent of Mabel, whose blood-lust the author often seemed to share.

For MacDonald's a rare poet-scholar, one who doesn't have a problem snaking her hands down the rabbit hole Mabel's legs have penetrated, grabbing the frantic rabbit ensnared by sharp talons, and snapping its neck. It's a merciful act, but I found myself appalled that MacDonald could do it. Her intensity has created a rare book though, even if by its final pages I was ready to head my own less-intense way.

~Ann, Adult Services

Downloading Digital Comics From Overdrive

We've got a lot of fans of comic books and graphic novels here at Carnegie-Stout and we're very proud of our collection of print comics for adults. We're also very excited that digital comics are starting to find their way into Overdrive as publishers like Image and Dark Horse start making their books available to library ebook readers. For a full list of comics currently available through Overdrive, use Advanced Search to see everything with the subject "Comic and Graphic Books." You can see the results of that search here.

(If you're not into kids' comics and want to get fancy, remember that you can set your Overdrive account to show only books of certain maturity levels -- but that's a different blog post.)

If you're used to downloading our ebooks in EPUB format, our comics are going to work a little differently from what you're used to. Most of them are in Overdrive's Read format. Read opens books in your browser and is generally pretty handy, but it takes a few extra steps to get your comics saved offline so you can read them without an internet connection. Let me walk you through it:

 On Anything Except an iPad or iPhone

If you're not on an iOS device, this is really quick. The screenshots I have are from an Android tablet, but things should be the same on an Android phone or a computer.

Once you've checked your comic out and you're at the Bookshelf page, you'll see a picture of the book and a button that says Read. Click Read to open the book in your browser.

Once the book has loaded, tap the center of the page to open up the Read menu and then the black box in the top left corner of the page to see more options.

In this sidebar menu, pick Offline Access.

In the Offline Access page, click the round button with a little cloud in the middle. Your device will spend a few seconds downloading and let you know when it's done. At this point, the book is saved on your device, but you still need to give yourself an easy way to get back to it. You can bookmark it just like a webpage, but I recommend putting it on your home screen or desktop. These steps will vary a little based on your device and what browser you're using, but Overdrive will give you instructions right on that Offline Access page. When you're done, you'll have a handy button to go straight to your comic.

On an iPad or iPhone

If you're on an iOS device, you'll want to do basically the same steps, but in a slightly different order. 

 Check your comic out and then, on the Bookshelf page, click the Read button.

Once your comic has opened in Safari, click the share button (that's the weird little square with an arrow coming out the top) and pick Add to Home Screen.

Now you've got a nice little link to your comic, but it's not saved on your device yet. Tap your new icon to open the book. You'll be asked to log in with your library card number and PIN, just like when you checked the book out.

Once you've logged in and the book has loaded, tap the center of the page to open the Read menu and then the black box in the top left corner to see more options.

 

In this sidebar, pick Offline Access. In the Offline Access page, click the round button with a small cloud in the center. Your device will spend a few seconds downloading the book and let you know when it's done. Once it's finished, you're all set. Just tap the icon on your home screen whenever you want to read more.

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