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Resolve to read more nonfiction in 2007. Dull and boring? Au contraire. As an avid reader of nonfiction, I can attest to the entertainment value of books on history, science, culture, sociology and a myriad of other topics.
“When entertainment and relaxation are your goals, you usually want to sit down with a novel, a western or a mystery,” said Library Center Reference Librarian Aleah Weltha. “But nonfiction can be just as entertaining and a good read. I think nonfiction got a bad rap from all the years we’ve spent reading high school and college textbooks.”
I recently completed a fascinating book entitled “Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage” by William J. Rathje and Cullen Murphy. The book’s premise—what we throw away as a country can tell a lot about us—is based on findings from the University of Arizona-sponsored Garbage Project.
For the past 30 years, Project members have excavated several landfill sites around the country. They’ve found, among other things, that disposable diapers are not filling up our landfills, contrary to popular belief, and newspapers are. You won’t find many major appliances either; the authors say used washers and dryers are given to the nice young couple next door and passed around until they end up as spare parts.
You can’t go wrong with a nonfiction book dedicated to Sean Connery and Ursula Andress. Check out “The Science of James Bond” by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg. Are the gadgets, gizmos, guns and rocket-firing cigarettes, not to mention all those cool cars, issued to the fictional Agent 007 by Q grounded in science or are they science fiction? This book, filled with anecdotes from the Bond movie shoots, will tell you.
Biographies can read like fiction. Take Julia Cameron’s memoir, “Floor Sample.” The author of the popular series of books, “The Artist’s Way,” and a central figure in the creative recovery movement, Cameron uses a readable novel-like format to tell us about her early career as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, her marriage to producer Martin Scorsese and her experiences with alcohol and Hollywood.
These are only three of the thousands of nonfiction titles crowding the shelves of the Springfield-Greene County Libraries. I guarantee you’ll find plenty of choices to keep your New Year’s resolution.
ON THE SHELVES
Jeanne C. Duffey, community relations director for the Springfield-Greene
County Library District, can be reached at jeanned@thelibrary.org.
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