July SeriesCAT - Nonfiction Series

It is easy to spot a series in fiction – stories about a recurring character or group of characters. The nearest equivalent in non-fiction would be a series of biographies of eg monarchs or presidents:


(some books from Roman Imperial Biographies)

Another example of a narrative series is histories of a particular country:

(some books from The Penguin History of Britain

Another method of organizing series is geographical:

(some books from Pevsner Buildings of England)

Other non-fiction series can cover a very wide range of subjects:

(some books from the A Very Short Introduction series)

Or be more narrowly based:

(some books from The Loeb Classical Library)

You might also want to explore such series as "For Dummies", "For Beginners", or "Teach Yourself", which are recognisable but not well-served as series on LT.

What non-fiction series would you recommend?

Please add your reading to the wiki if you feel so inclined: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2023_SeriesCAT#July:_Nonfiction_series_....

I will probably be reading some Very Short Introductions for this month, though I haven't decided which ones yet.

I have The Pageant of England series by Thomas B. Costain. I'll start with the first one, The Conquering Family.

The German equivalent of the "Very Short Introductions" is C.H.Beck's "Wissen" series, where they tackle wide and narrow subjects on 124 pages. I've got quite a few of those...

I've been watching the Simon Sharma BBC series A History of Britain, which was produced in 3 series sometime ~ 20 years ago. Each series has a book to accompany it, making a nice non-fiction trilogy. I might finally read one of them, having had them since new!

Maya Angelou's autobiography is written in a series of books, so I think I'll read Gather Together in my Name which is the second book.

I'll probably read Espionage: A Concise History by Kristie Macrakis from the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series.

Oh, I've always wanted to pick out a "Very Short Introduction" to something. But I also have a "For Dummies" book here at home...

I will probably read something from the kids' series of "What was...." or "Who was...."

I would say I'm most likely going to read the book I have here at home:
Weather for Dummies / John D. Cox.

COMPLETED Translation: A Very Short Introduction by Matthew Reynolds

The author tries to define translation as a wider activity than what most people think of but most of the examples he gives are still focussed on the translation of one national literature into another despite occasional nods in the direction of translations of other types of document such as the output of international bodies and manga. By the end of the book his predilection for coining new terms such as translationality and transadaption just gets irritating. A disappointment.

I read What is the Bermuda Triangle? which is part of a kids' series of nonfiction books.

I read Miroslav Šašek, by Martin Salisbury, a biography that is part of a non-fiction series called The Illustrators.

Also, I'd forgotten that earlier in the year I'd read Vincent Lam's biography of Tommy Douglas, part of the Extraordinary Canadians series. However, I read the French version translated by Alain Roy because that was the only edition my library system had.

I read The World's Wickedest Women by Margaret Nicholas

The August SeriesCat is up and can be found here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/352235

Starting Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Coles

COMPLETED Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Coles

My review:
Despite the author's engaging style, I suspect the glimmers of understanding may have just been an illusion. A glossary would have helped.

COMPLETED Necropolis: London And Its Dead by Catharine Arnold. I didn't know when I started it that it is part of what LT at least calls the Catharine Arnold London Trilogy

I Want My MTV is a history of the channel from the start in 1981 to the mid nineties. I have several of these tv history type books on my list. This one was told mostly through clips of interviews with music stars or people who worked at the channel. Live from New York is another one and I just found TV: the book to add to my pile. I've read I Like to Watch and Here on Gilligan's Isle before.

Weather for Dummies / John D. Cox
3.5 stars

The title (and if you know the series) pretty much tells you about this one. It explains weather in a simplified way. From the front of the book: “Explore how weather is forecast; Get a close-up look at clouds, storms, and seasons; Understand how climate affects weather”.

I thought it was good, but it didn’t have as much humour as the other “For Dummies” books I’ve read; I usually really like the humour, so I missed that. In all honesty, even though it was simplified, I still had trouble fully understanding some of the explanations and had to reread a few paragraphs more than once. Even so, I definitely learned things. Did you know they always take temperature readings in the shade? Meteorology is harder than rocket science (with the latter often being held up as something you need to be super-smart to do), because “rocket scientists” study space outside Earth’s atmostphere, which is a lot calmer and doesn’t constantly change like our atmosphere and weather does closer to the ground. Those are just a couple of things that stuck in my head.

There was some repetition but that’s because it is meant to be a reference, so you don’t need to read it front to back; the repetition didn’t bother me, but I wanted to mention it for others. There is (in the 2nd edition that I have) a section of colour photos in the middle. Every so often, I’ve thought it would be so interesting to be a meteorologist; LOL! There is no way when I have a hard time understanding the simplified explanations! (As interesting as it might actually be.)

I picked Pandemien from the Beck Wissen series and hoped to learn about pandemics. Unfortunately, there was so much unexplained technical jargon that I got lost.

I've read The History of Espionage.

I finished Espionage: A Concise History by Kristie Macrakis

I completed The Conquering Family by Thomas Costain, the first in the Pageant of England series.
A very readable history about the emergence of the Plantagenets. The first few pages were a slow start for me until I figured out who everyone was but after that, I really enjoyed it. Costain has a wonderful style. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

Thank you everybody for participating. I hope you found your books interesting and useful.

Finally got to mine! Georgia O'Keeffe: She Saw the World in a Flower, part of the What The Artist Saw series, published by The Met and DK Publishing. This is a wonderful series for young art lovers.

It took me a long time to get to filling this slot in the SeriesCAT challenge, but I finally succeeded with Let's Make Dumplings, a graphic-novel cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan. It's the second book in a series that started with Let's Make Ramen. I highly recommend this cookbook if you're interested in learning about the history and making of all kinds of Asian style dumplings.