Chapter 1: What distinguishes bad non-fiction from quality non-fiction?
When you're reading a novel, a work of fiction, and it's not doing it for you, it'll always have an aura of earnestness to it. Because even when a novel is bad, you know that the author took the time to come up with fictional characters, to arrange a plot, develop a world, all to entertain you. And it probably took them months, if not years, to write.
It's a little escape for the both of you, right? The author and the listener. And I think there's something kind of romantic about that. Imagine, if aliens were observing us and noticed behavior that the humans partake in, they'd be like, wow, isn't that adorable? They write stories for each other. That's so cute. But again, it doesn't matter if the story is good or bad.
But nonfiction, on the other hand, when it's bad, doesn't have that earnest feeling to it at all. Bad nonfiction feels like you're being lied to. Bad nonfiction feels like you're being talked at by an annoying stranger at the bus stop. Bad nonfiction feels like listening to someone only talk about themselves and never ask about you.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying this to disparage nonfiction entirely. It can be just as engrossing as nonfiction, but it needs a few key elements. Today, we're attempting to define quality nonfiction. This is Audiobook Cafe. I'm Jacob Szymanski. And when I say we, I'm including Mr. Red Sale. He's the host of My Life in Books on AMI-audio, also available as a podcast.
He's connecting from London, UK. What's up, Red? Hi, Jacob. Thanks for having me back on the show. Of course, man. Always. Red comes on the show roughly every two weeks and we do these more topical conversations. And last time around, we talked about... Defining quality prose. And following along those lines, we're doing defining quality nonfiction.
And Red, I think we're kind of unique in that we are men who openly prefer fiction, which is not the norm. There's a pretty strong preference among men for nonfiction over fiction. But we want to define what makes quality nonfiction, because I don't know if you agree with me, because I'm not an overly opinionated person, but I feel so strongly when I read bad nonfiction, it drives me nuts.
Bad nonfiction is like the worst sort of art. It's lazy.
I must say, I find bad nonfiction utterly unbearable. And... Good nonfiction makes you forget that you're being taught something. It's more like being guided by a trusted and informed friend. Bad nonfiction is the pub bore who just leans across. I'm going to tell you another thing. And you just can't wait to escape.
Whereas good nonfiction actually just feels like going for a fantastic walk with a friend and coming back enlightened.
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Chapter 2: What are the essential elements of quality non-fiction writing?
My Life in Books, yes. So to be clear, the do for nonfiction in this case was answer the why beyond the what. Don't just give us a list of what happened. We want to know why. Another book that I can recommend along these lines is Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. I really love John Green. He's an American author and
And this book, Everything is Tuberculosis, is essentially, on paper, the history of tuberculosis. But he could just give you the history, you know, in chronological order and everything we know about it. But really, the book is about everything. why John Green is so fascinated by the history of tuberculosis.
And he does that by presenting this story of a tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone called Henry and the relationship that develops with him while he's there visiting. And it's this like crossover between the story of Henry and the history of tuberculosis and all the wacky things around it and how tuberculosis has really shaped humanity. But it all comes back to why it's so fascinating to him.
So it's kind of personal, but it's more than just a factual history book. You're getting the real story of Henry. You're getting to learn about John Green and... The things about tuberculosis that make it so fascinating. So highly recommend Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green.
And I think it's absolutely vital, Jacob, that... What you're reading about is something that you can empathize with. And what's so important with that is the voice of the author. You know, we don't want style over substance, but we do want that author to sound like a human being, not a press release.
Yes.
Or a god-like figure sometimes. Exactly. That's it. And I want to hear my author thinking on the page. You know, he needs to be curious. He needs to be sceptical. It's got to be the kind of mind you want to follow. I think if you're asking questions, if the author is asking questions during the narrative, he is reflecting the reader's own questions.
And a healthy dollop of scepticism is really good from that point of view because you are journeying with the author. As you say, you don't want some omniscient god just telling you how it is. You know, this is a book, not graven tablets.
And when you get those bits of reflection from the author, where I've seen this sort of thing, where an author might say, well, X thing is this way because of Y. But after some thinking, I started asking questions, this question and that question. It wasn't all quite adding up. And so I had to look in a different place. And I found this and that. It shows that the author isn't arrogant.
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Chapter 3: How do personal experiences enhance non-fiction storytelling?
You know, that sort of thing. It's very... there's a causation to everything and that gets really monotonous real fast um but great non-fiction feels like fiction because the authors think in terms of scenes and tension and release and build up and payoff and setup and there's almost a plot to it it just happens to be real
I absolutely love the new kind of trend of narrative history and narrative biography where you're really looking almost at a character study of the subject of the book. And I've got an interview coming up on My Life in Books in March with a guy called J. Randy Tarabarelli, who is a really celebrated biographer and one of the most respected authorities on the Kennedy family.
And his latest book, JFK, Public Private Secret, gives a really fabulous three-dimensional portrait of John F. Kennedy. And, you know, the public side, you know, his service as a senator and a president is the private side as a son, a brother, and a husband, and then the secret side, which shows his personal flaws, the sex scandals, the terrible problems he had with illness through his life.
He had awful back problems. He had a back operation that nearly killed him. None of this came out in his lifetime whatsoever. And Tarabarelli delves into Secret Service files, into open source history. But he also has 35 years of interviewing people who knew JFK, who were intimate with him. He has personal memoirs from... a couple of JFK's lovers.
He talks to JFK's mother-in-law, who just gave a fascinating insight into JFK. And also Joe Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's father, was having an open affair with his personal assistant for much of the time. And even though this woman's now, I think, 102 years old,
J. Randy Tarabarelli talks to her and gets incredible insight into why JFK was such a flawed man, how his upbringing and what he saw around him informed him. I... I came away thinking, oh, my goodness, the story of the Kennedys is like a Greek tragedy. You know, the mechanism has been set in train. There are personal flaws within all these characters. And...
As time goes on, these people are just heading towards tragedy, towards a great fall. And I forgot that I was reading a biography for a lot of this book.
The amazing part of that is that it's all so well sourced. It's all the work of a very responsible historian with primary sources. He's journalistic about it.
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Chapter 4: What role does clarity play in non-fiction writing?
It sounds like it's just written biographically. To be narrative, to be narratively engaging.
Exactly. And I think the one thing that we really have not mentioned here is that we as audiobook listeners to nonfiction, we will really spot if it's a badly written book. It will sound percussive. it will feel like somebody has just done a massive information dump. And it's just this fact, this fact, this fact, this fact.
I think it's because it's hard to actually read out loud books that are written so factually in matter of fact. When you write narratively, it's literally easier and more pleasant to read out loud, but also just to listen. Another history book I want to highlight because it's written so narratively, like a movie almost. I loved this book. The Wager by David Grant.
I don't know if you've heard about this one. Amazing book. Amazing, right? For people who don't know about it, it follows an expedition from the UK that was meant to go to the eastern Pacific Ocean to defend against Spanish ships or something along those lines. But One of the ships gets shipwrecked on an island off the southern coast of Argentina.
And the book follows and reports on the journey of these survivors and how they stayed on the island for months and eventually built a replacement ship, craft, raft, whatever you want to call it. And they sailed all the way up to Brazil and found their way back home after months and an absolutely grueling journey.
And you learn about the people involved, their families back home, who they were, their jobs, the way sailing worked at the time, the way news traveled, and how it was an absolute sensation back in the UK. And then there was this whole plot of whose story is real because it involved mutiny and murder.
It felt so dramatic, but again, is sourced in real history by consulting a bunch of really detailed ship logs from people who are on these ships and all these sailors who would write diaries and journal entries over the months that they were on the crafts and on the island. Incredible book, The Wager by David Graham.
Exactly. It just ticks those two boxes that are so vital for nonfiction. You know why that book needed to be written. When you finish it, you just go, God, that's a great story. I can't believe I didn't know that. And as you say, the author does not talk down to you. It could be really easy. He's done so much research. It could be really easy for
For him to just go, oh, you know, I am omniscient. I am telling you the story. But actually, he feels... It feels like he's brought you into his front room and just gone, I got this great story. You'll never believe this. The passion.
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