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Nonfiction November 2017 continues with a prompt about favorite nonfiction books hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey<\/a>:<\/p>\n Nonfiction Favorites: We\u2019ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I\u2019m excited to talk about what makes a book you\u2019ve read one of your favorites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular ways a story can be told or particular writing styles that you love? Do you look for a light, humorous approach or do you prefer a more serious tone? Let us know what qualities make you add a nonfiction book to your list of favorites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For me, the subject matter is probably the most important element in choosing<\/em> a nonfiction book, but to become one of my favorites a nonfiction book will have one of two main qualities:<\/p>\n They Left Handprints on the Wall of My Soul:<\/strong> When I look over my favorite nonfiction books on LibraryThing<\/a>, what immediately jumps out to me is how much these books have made a difference in my life. Whether they’re about reading, writing, spirituality, or some other topic, I can see their handprints on the wall of my soul. They moved<\/em> me. In other words, I am who I am partly because I have read and re-read these nonfiction favorites. I have mentioned many of them in this blog over the years, but here are a few I have not mentioned as often as the others, if at all:<\/p>\n They Mentored Me, and Continue to Do So:<\/strong> The other quality I notice in my nonfiction favorites is that they have given me the answers or skills I needed to do something important (like teach or preach), or they have informed me in an interesting and compelling way about something I was especially curious about. In other words, they taught<\/em> me, and continue to teach me. Great nonfiction books are like Mr. Miyagi, and I am Daniel-san learning to “wax on, wax off.” They are the mentor and I am the student. No matter how often I read them, they still have more to teach me. Here a few books that fall into that category that I somehow haven’t written much about:<\/p>\n Other qualities I find in most of my favorite nonfiction titles are common to all good nonfiction:<\/p>\n Do any of these qualities resonate with you? Which nonfiction books have left handprints on your soul? Which nonfiction authors have been the Mr. Miyagi’s in your reading life?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nonfiction November 2017 continues with a prompt about favorite nonfiction books hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey: Nonfiction Favorites: We\u2019ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I\u2019m excited to talk about what makes a book you\u2019ve read one of your favorites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular ways a story can be told or particular writing styles that you love? Do you look for a light, humorous approach or do you prefer a more serious tone?...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Handprints on the Wall of My Soul: Nonfiction November 2017 Week 4 #nonfictionNovember #nonfiction","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[994,36,993,350,168,995,89,992,833,832,991,761],"class_list":["post-5686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-bishop-ken-untener","tag-book-recommendations","tag-edward-hirsch","tag-fr-ronald-rolheiser","tag-henry-david-thoreau","tag-john-hersey","tag-joseph-height","tag-nancie-atwell","tag-nonfiction","tag-nonfiction-november","tag-parker-palmer","tag-richard-rohr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/nonfiction_favorites.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-1tI","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5686"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5698,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5686\/revisions\/5698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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