The Nonfiction List!

You should know that I love lists. It's a minor obsession with me. Remember when VH1 had that show called The List? Of course you don't. And that's why it's not on anymore and that's why I cry a lot. In a previous post, I misstated myself and said the Modern Library did not have a nonfiction list, which was so wrong, so wrong. They do in fact have one, but it is sucky. View it for yourself here: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnonfiction.html

Okay, yes. Some of it is good, such as Notes of a Native Son (Baldwin), The Double Helix (Watson), Aspects of a Novel (Forster), Speak, Memory (Nabokov), and one of my favorites: Out of Africa (Dinesen). However, much of the list is littered with historical biographies, and/or religious and sociopolitical texts. What I want is a LITERARY NONFICTION list. Let's start one. Come on. You and me. Here's ten to grow on:

Refuge (Williams)
Salvation on Sand Mountain (Covington)
Going to Ground (Blackmarr)
Century of the Wind (Galeano)
The Undertaking (Lynch)
About This Life (Lopez)
Works on Paper (Weinberger)
Lost in Place (Salzman)
Under the Banner of Heaven (Krakauer)
Leap (Williams)

There it is. Two for Terry Tempest Williams. No surprise there. She sort of rocks it, Utah/Morman style. What else is good. Let's give the Modern Library a run for its government-sponsored money.