This year, I read a grand total of twenty-seven books of nonfiction. Which is pretty impressive considering that I’ve only read eighty-two books so far this year. Yes, I know that is a lot of books, and most normal people would be extremely happy with that number. It’s just not as many as I usually read in a year. So whether you read two or two hundred books this year, you should feel good about it. Anyway…

I’ve been kind of on a nonfiction kick recently. The last ten books I read have been nonfiction. I don’t know why my brain has decided those are the only books I can handle, but I’m not mad about it. Obviously, I’ve read a lot of really great nonfiction books this year, but there were definitely a few that stood out. I put together my list of the ten best nonfiction books I read this year. They weren’t the ones I would have predicted, but they are the ones I really loved the most.

I tried to put them in order counting up to my favorite nonfiction book of the year, but they were kind of hard to rank, so this is a very rough list. Either way, they’re all in my top ten. So here are the ten best nonfiction books I read in 2022:

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong

This is a collection of contemporary essays by disabled people. It was put together by Alice Wong, who has the distinction of being the only author to appear on this list twice. Disability was a subject I really tried to explore more of in my reading this year – both in fiction and nonfiction. I thought this collection was really amazing. It contains so many different and diverse perspectives, all of which are incredibly valuable. I learned a lot from reading this book, and I do think it’s a book everyone should read.

Nonfiction about disability makes an appearance a few more times on this list, but I think this one is the most accessible to a wider audience. It very much feels like an education on disabled experiences, which is something our society really needs. As a disabled person myself, I liked this book because there were stories I really identified with and stories I really didn’t. Both educated me on how other disabled people experience the world. I definitely liked some of the stories more than others, but I still really enjoyed it overall.

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

In the past couple of years, I have been working on reading more nonfiction about race. I didn’t read much this year, but I am very glad I picked this one up. Pretty much all of the books I’d read about race prior to this one were about the Black experience. And while I have thoroughly enjoyed (almost) all of them and learned so much, I also recognized there are more minorities that experience racism. So when I saw this one, which is written by a Lebanese author, I immediately picked it up.

I liked that this book addresses how white supremacy affects many different minority groups, and in different ways. I also liked how this book focuses specifically on how racism and feminism are intertwined. Last year, I read Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall and loved it. This book feels like a companion to that book, where more groups are represented. Highly recommend, especially if you also enjoyed (or were made to feel ashamed by) Hood Feminism.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

This year, I actually read three nonfiction books by authors I’d read before. An Immense World is the only one of those to have made the list. This book is all about how animals experience the world very differently than we do. Fun fact I learned from this book: if our ears could pick up bat sonar, it would be like living in a rock concert every night. I don’t know how many bats live where I do, but I am incredibly grateful that I cannot hear them and that we can all sleep at night. Which is something I never even thought about before this book.

I’d been itching to pick up a science book this year, and never got around to it. This book fit the bill, and was an excellent choice. It was so fascinating! I am a massive nerd, and love learning weird facts, and have found the best recourse for them is nonfiction books about science. While I was a little bit worried this book wouldn’t meet my expectations after how much I enjoyed Ed Yong’s first book, I Contain Multitudes, those worries were completely unfounded. I liked this one even more.

Mean Baby by Selma Blair

I read a few celebrity memoirs this year, and I really loved all of them. I do, however, have a soft spot for this one. Like Selma Blair, I also have multiple sclerosis. And I was curious to read about her experience since MS affects people in very different ways, and hers looked much more severe than mine. I did enjoy those parts of the book (obviously, I could strongly identify with them). But what I ended up enjoying most was just getting to know more about her.

I’d seen her in a few movies over the years, and obviously knew who she was even before her MS diagnosis (she was diagnosed a month before I was, but I wasn’t really paying attention to that until later). She was one of those actors I liked, but didn’t follow all that closely. I definitely like her even more now after reading this book. Her life was so interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about it though this book.

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo

Just a heads up, this is the second of five (and a half) memoirs on this list. It was a big memoir year for me, and (clearly) that was a good thing. I picked this one up because I had never seen a book about CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder). I was diagnosed with CPTSD a few years ago due to my childhood trauma. I’ve found reading about topics like this one very helpful in improving my mental health, but CPTSD isn’t something I’d seen much of at all. So I was excited to see a memoir all about it.

This memoir was so good. It was well written and I found that I was completely absorbed in her story. Full disclosure, this is not an easy book to read. Stephanie Foo talks about a lot of hard topics and very traumatic experiences. But I found it really enlightening to read about someone else’s journey of healing from CPTSD and what she went though to get there. Just a really great memoir.

Finding Me by Viola Davis

I almost didn’t get around to reading this book before the end of the year, but I am so glad I did! I was already a fan of Viola Davis before I picked this up, but I’m even more obsessed with her now. She’s absolutely brilliant, and it was fascinating to learn her story and what she had to overcome to get where she is today. I can’t say enough good things about this book.

Finding Me was also featured in my audiobook favorites post, because I thought Viola Davis did an incredible job of reading it. And apparently other people agree with me, because she was actually nominated for a Grammy for this audiobook! Which is amazing, and I hope she wins. If she does, she will be joining the very exclusive EGOT club, and I think that’s well deserved.

Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong

I don’t really like reading two books by the same author in the same year – something in my brain just goes “but what about all the other authors you’re not reading???” and I don’t know why I’m like this. But Alice Wong convinced me. Partly because I enjoyed Disability Visibility so much and wanted to learn more about her. But mostly because this book just came out and my brain decided if I was going to read a book called Year of the Tiger, I had to do it in the year of the tiger. My reading logic is weird, and it’s fine.

But I did really enjoy this book. Alice Wong is a badass and everyone should know who she is. This book so brilliantly shines a light on what it’s like to be disabled in a world that’s really not meant for disabled people. It was incredibly interesting because she also talks about what it was like when the pandemic hit and so many people decided it was fine for disabled people to die so they could hang out with their friends or pretend everything was normal. As a disabled person, I can say that it was terrifying and I hated it.

The world treats disabled people like we are disposable or not worth as much as able-bodied people. Alice Wong proves them all wrong. Not just in what she has to say, but in the fact that she brings more good to the world than most people. She’s such an inspiration, and I absolutely loved reading more about her.

A History of My Brief Body by Billy Ray Belcourt

This is the only memoir on this list written by someone I wasn’t already familiar with that also didn’t cover topics I can identify with. Billy Ray Belcourt is an Indigenous gay man, and this memoir is about his journey of exploding his sexuality. And honestly, I was a little surprised by how much I loved this book. Not because it was about experiences that area pretty far from my own. But because the author talked about doing thing that, as someone who errs very much on the side of caution, gave me so much anxiety. I just wanted to go give him a hug and tell him to stop putting himself in danger.

Despite me wanting to both hug and scream at him, I flew though this book. I finished it in a couple hours and wanted more. It’s so beautifully written, I was obsessed with the writing. I rarely put tabs in books, but with this one, I felt the need to mark the quotes I found so impactful.

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc

This was the first book about disability I read this year, and I have not stopped thinking about it since. Disfigured is part memoir, part sociology book. The author ties in her own experience of being diagnosed and living with cerebral palsy with how disability is portrayed in fairy tales. And if you hadn’t guessed: it’s not great. I didn’t go into this book thinking it would be, but it’s so much worse than I had imagined. I know fairy tales (and Disney movies) perpetrate some pretty harmful ideas and stereotypes. But this book points out things I’d never considered. Like the fact that Scar is known by his facial disfigurement. No wonder he’s angry all the time.

This is a book I think everyone should read. There are so many things we learn from fairy tales and Disney movies as children that are really not okay. Disability is never really portrayed in a positive light. Or at least not in a way that’s meant to reinforce that a character is evil or in need of “fixing”. We just got our first Disney lead who wears glasses last year. We’re lacking a lot of diversity, and that includes disability. I absolutely recommend this book. It’ll change the way you think of fairytales and how you look at the world. Because I’d bet you’ve internalized some of those prejudices even if you don’t know it.

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur

Finally, we have this book. Which to be fair, probably takes the top spot because I love The Good Place so much. But I’ve always been interested in philosophy, and this book does such a great job of explaining many different concepts without hurting my brain. It was such a great read, made even better by the fact that the cast of The Good Place participated in narrating the audiobook. I don’t have much to say about this book other than if you’re a Good Place fan, you need to read it. And if you’re interested in philosophy and want a good beginner’s overview, this is a really great one.

That’s it for my nonfiction favorites this year! I hope you all enjoyed this post! Did you read any nonfiction this year? What was your favorite?

And check out my bookshop, where you can buy books and also shop my curated collections of my personal favorites AND all of the books I’ve read for my reading eperiments. Or you can just buy whatever books you want to. I get a small commission at no extra cost to you, and you get to support your choice of indie bookstores – it’s a win all around!

Click here if you want to check out my bookshop and support this blog!