I love the gray area between journalism, essays, and memoir. Generally: stuff that tricks you into learning a lot about an (often unexpected) topic and that tends wins you over with personality in the voice. Gonzo-style immersion is a nice plus. I used to read this stuff a lot but am currently in a slump with it. I’m eyeing Gay Talese’s Thy Neighbor’s Wife for a near future read, but I’m always in the mood to get excited about similar books.
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The kinds of stuff I’ve really enjoyed in the past that I’d lump into this camp:
* Joan Didion’s **Slouching Towards Bethlehem**
* Hanif Abdurraqib’s **They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us** & **A Little Devil in America**
* David Foster Wallace’s **Consider the Lobster** (whole book)
* Bill Buford’s **Among the Thugs** (fav read last year, loved it)
* Alexander Chee’s **How to Write an Autobiographical Novel**
* Annie Dillard’s **Teaching a Stone to Talk**
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Other nonfic near this camp, but maybe not within it, that I liked a lot:
* Rebecca Solnit’s **A Paradise Built in Hell**
* Melissa Febos’s **Girlhood**
* Maggie Nelson’s **The Argonauts**
by kckarlson