#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!

Hi everyone,

I can’t quite believe the end of the year is now just around the corner. I spent the weekend buying Christmas gifts and reading The Empire of Gold, which I will now have to spent the whole week recovering from (DARA!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭). This week for #5OnMyTBR, we’re talking all about nonfiction! Until this year, I really hadn’t read many nonfiction books or memoirs, and one of my goals for the year was to read more in this genre. I’m very glad I did because I’ve really loved the nonfic books I’ve read, so hopefully I’ll read even more next year! But for now, here’s five on my TBR!

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson

This has one of the most gorgeous book covers of the year and is one of my must read books before the year ends. All Boys Aren’t Blue is an essay collection from LGBTQIA+ activist George M Johnson that covers topics from gender identity to toxic masculinity, consent to Black joy.

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Colour by Ruby Hamad

This nonfiction book just released last month and looks like it will be a challenging, confronting and fucking necessary read for white people, particularly white women, as Hamad tackles how white women’s tears are weaponised against people of colour to uphold white supremacy and the patriarchy.

Show Me Where It Hurts by Kylie Maslen

Another must read book, this time about disability, this essay collection from Maslen examines invisible disabilities in particular. Show Me Where it Hurts draws on topics such as online culture, art and pop music to reveal the reality of living with an invisbile illness in a world very much not build for disbality.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang 

This essay collections explores Wang’s personal journey towards her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and how it manifests in her life. She also confronts the issues and dangers of opinions about mental illness within the medical community, combining both research and her personal narrative in the collection.

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir by Wayétu Moore

Finally, the last book on my list this week is a memoir from Wayétu Moore about her life spent escaping the Liberian Civil War and then growing up in the US. When Moore was 5 years old, the civil war broke out in Liberia, and so her family had to flee the country. But when Moore reached the US, she had to adjust to life as an immigrant and Black woman in America as she continued to search for somewhere to call home.

Have you got any favourite nonfiction books? I think my favourite I’ve read this year is How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones. It was such a powerful book, one that created such a vivid and brutal reading experience – you can really tell Jones has a background as a poet because the way this book is written is just brilliant. I’m pretty sure it’ll end up on my favourite books of the year list!