Lynness: Non-fiction picks

    Ditto to pretty much everything Rae said.  I used to think non-fiction was education, not entertainment, but have learned in the past five years or so that it can definitely be both.  I do think that the books written about people's life experiences are some of the most memorable reads.  I'm thinking books like The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (Terry Ryan) or Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place (climber stuck in canyons in Southern Utah who eventually has to amputate his own hand to get free).  Truth is often stranger (and just as interesting/entertaining as) fiction!
    I also enjoy essays and vignettes, especially humorous ones, like Bailey White's Mama Makes Up Her Mind (and Other Dangers of Southern Living) from which she has read sketches on NPR.
    I don't know if you're into the same sort of things I am, but if you have a scientific bent that also includes cooking and medicine,  I've enjoyed James Gleick's Chaos and one called Fuzzy Logic (I can't remember the author).  Russ Parson's How to read a french fry: and other stories of intriguing kitchen science is not really in story form, but is quite interesting. I've read Crypto, about the advent of digital cryptography, and a book on forensic pathology, (I'd have to go to the library and find it to tell you the name...).
    There's many more, but since I don't record them like Rae, I can't think of more now...I posted a little while ago about finding fiction authors that people have liked, since I find I'm reading mostly non-fiction.  My favorite way to find new non-fiction is to browse the "new books" shelf at the library.  We have a very good and large library system and hundreds of new books come in monthly.  I pick up more non-fiction than fiction there because there seem to be so many more "flies" in the popular fiction on the new book shelves.

Hope this gives you and others some jumping off points!