For all those lovers of adult nonfiction, we’ve added a new page to our Wiki, JMRL Reads,  just for you, called Narrative Nonfiction!

The JMRL Wiki is a page made by JMRL’s librarians to help connect our readers to interesting new books. This week we’ve just added a link about narrative nonfiction. What’s that, you might ask?

Narrative nonfiction is nonfiction that reads like a novel. It’s sometimes called creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction. But it all amounts to the same– it’s nonfiction that is written in a creative and interesting way so that it reads more easily. It’s popular because it is informational, well-written, and reads like a story.

Here are some recommendations to get you started, but stay updated on the JMRL Reads page to be sure you don’t miss out on any new titles that are added to our list!

Literature and Language

• The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett

• The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

True Crime

• Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale

• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

• Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi

• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

• Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh

Science

• Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese

• Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Saved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

Medical

• The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry

• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman

• Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation by Sandeep Jauhar

• The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

• An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks

Animal Stories

• Dewey: The Small-town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron

• Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story Between an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien

Food Narratives

• No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach by Anthony Bourdain

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

• Cod: a Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky

• Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

• Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen by Jason Sheehan

Sports and Entertainment

• Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by John Krakauer

Travel

• Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng

• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

History

• The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story Diane Ackerman

• Roar of the Heavens by Stefan Bechtel

• Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929 by Karen Blumenthal

Memoirs and Biography

• The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber

• The Prisoner’s Wife: a Memoir by Asha Bandele

• Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

• My Life in France by Julia Child

• Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji-Li Jiang

• Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

• Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah

• Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Aspergers by John Elder Robison

• Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel

-The Sponge for Knowledge