hiya annie! i check out your dreamwidth sometimes (old hand at these things) & noticed you've been reading a fair bit these days! does your reading ever factor into your fic writing? or other forms of writing that you do? always curious about the writers behind the fics i love, and since you read a lot of non-fiction, i'm even more curious about what you think. also, if it's not too personal, i'd love it if you could share some of your esp faves!! looking for more stuff to read atm ty xoxo
Hello, hi, thanks for the ask! My reading definitely influenced my fic writing more in the past, mostly in terms of style and rhythm, before I figured out the writing styles I'm most comfortable with. I tend to be way more relaxed about fic-writing these days, so I think the main takeaway from reading non-fiction would be picking up interesting words or topics I can use as throwaway topics in fic. Like, what thing have I just read that Tony can mention off-hand in casual conversation, maybe hypersonic flight? That kind of thing. Though I do like picking up new words or terms through reading and that may subconsciously influence the way I think. Maybe?
OKAY BOOK RECS! These are all non-fiction, and I've posted about these before on my dreamwidth so you might've seen them, but here's a bunch I've really enjoyed:
I just read First Man, a biography about Neil Armstrong by James R. Hansen, it's very readable if you're interested about early NASA, the space race, and what the life of the first man of the moon was like after he came back the Earth. It does get a bit technical in places but it also humanizes a lot of the people involved in the US space program. Armstrong's fellow Apollo 11 crewmate Michael Collins has an autobiography, Carrying the Fire, which is REALLY witty, you might've seen some of Collins' quotes around tumblr, and this book is that, but MORE. (Aldrin has an autobiography as well but I haven't read that yet.)
Christina Thompson’s Sea People, which is about the investigative history on how the original Polynesians colonised the Polynesian triangle, of where the early settlers came from, how they navigated to get to the islands, what routes they took, and so on. Goes all the way to modern day with the resurgence of Polynesian navigation. (Related to this I have the book Hawaiki Rising by Sam Low on my To Read list but haven't been able to get it yet.)
Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1962 is as you can tell from the title about the Salem witch trials, and it is a dark chapter of US history that I only knew some of the broad strokes about before, and in my opinion this book is not just interesting for giving context for how it happened and what happened afterward once the dust cleared, but is good reading to understand how groupthink and community hysteria can happen.
John S. Croucher and Rosalind F. Croucher's Mistress of Science: The Remarkable Story of Janet Taylor, a biography about scientist Janet Taylor, who built compasses and navigation equipment in a field dominated by men, and who published maps and navigation documents for sailors during the height of the Age of Sail. If you're into the Age of Sail era this is also cool for how Taylor's career spanned the industrial revolution until sail started to be replaced by steam.
Maria Konnikova's The Confidence Game, which is about the psychology of scams, and how conpeople take advantage of their victims. Scams are so rampant these days so it's been something I've been thinking about a lot, and this book just hammers it home that intelligence level doesn't preclude anyone from being a victim, and there's no "right" way to exist in society if you want to never ever get duped.
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