It’s the first week of Nonfiction November and this week (27th October – 2nd November) we are hosted by Heather at Based on a True Story.

The challenge is as follows:

Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read since this time last year? What were your favorites? Have you had a favorite topic? Is there a topic you want to read about more? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

Even though I love nonfiction I don’t read a lot and this year’s total is even lower than usual, with just seven books and I’ve only reviewed four of them, marked *, plus three in Nov/Dec 2024 to make it the full year. I’ve linked the titles to Amazon for those books I haven’t reviewed.

*Keir Starmer: the Biography by Tom Baldwin

Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn – a remarkable book, about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place. It’s not a book to read quickly, but rather one to take your time to take in all the details. It’s fascinating, thoroughly researched and beautifully written.

*Wintering by Katherine May

*The Boy With No Shoes: a Memoir by William Horwood – I loved this book

Little Ern!: the Authorized Biography of Ernie Wise by Robert Sellers & James Hogg

*The Spy in the Archive by Gordon Corera

Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark by Alan Taylor – review to follow later

The following are books I began reading in November 2024. I haven’t reviewed any of them, although I wrote a few paragraphs about two of them in my Book Pairings post on November 13th 2024.

Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews In Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 by Ian Black – This is an extremely detailed chronological account of events in this conflict from the years from 1882 preceding the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to 2017. Ian Black was a British journalist who worked for The Guardian holding the posts of diplomatic editor and Europe editor as well as Middle East editor. I’m quoting from his obituary in January 2023: ‘he embodied the correspondent’s duty to show fairness to both parties. That refusal to reinforce the narrative of one side alone informed his writing on the Israel-Palestine conflict from the start.’ So I thought this could be a good place to start. And as far as I can tell it is an unbiased and factual account,with many references to Black’s sources, and it took me a long time to read it

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know by Don Waxman – This book is more readable than Black’s and is written as a series of questions and answers covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins up to the present day (2019). It explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides.

Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé – this ‘examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel’. (Amazon)

By participating in Nonfiction November I’m hoping this will encourage me to read more nonfiction rather than picking up the next novel to read and I’m looking forward to seeing what others recommend.

Updated 30 October 2025