As much as I love to lose myself in a good novel, I also enjoy a great non-fiction read. Dipping into a memoir or a book about cooking or gardening takes me out of the realm of plotting, setting, and character development, and puts me into someone else’s life or gets me thinking about flowers or food!  Here are a few books I’d be happy to find under my tree this holiday season.

The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing. As Laing restores an 18^th century garden at her home in the English countryside, she also explores issues of gratitude, stewardship and the contradictions of gardens themselves.  Another garden book on my short list is One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury who writes about how her climate-change anxiety pushed her to look for positive ways to do more for wildlife and biodiversity.

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoe Schlanger. While acknowledging that the subject of plant intelligence divides scientists, Schlanger travels the globe interviewing biologists and researching how plants have adapted and developed the intelligence needed to survive and thrive. Can plants interact and help each other? Recognize caretakers? Feel pain? Do they retain memories? Schlanger addresses these questions and more in a book that became a New York Times bestseller and also hit Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024 list.

The Traitor’s Daughter: Captured by Nazis, Pursued by the KGB, My Mother’s Odyssey to Freedom from Her Secret Past by Roxana Spicer. The story of a daughter’s decades-long quest to understand her mother, who was born in Lenin’s Soviet Union, served as a combat solider in the Red Army, and endured three years of Nazi captivity—but never revealed her darkest secrets. Spicer, a Canadian journalist and documentarian, became obsessed with discovering the truth and traveled back to many of the places that played a role in her mother’s story. Exhaustively researched and powerfully told, Spicer’s book became an instant Canadian bestseller.

One Way Back, a Memoir by Christine Blasey Ford. Psychology Professor Blasey Ford stepped forward during the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh to testify about being abused by Kavanaugh when she was a teenager. This memoir goes behind the headlines to focus on the impact on Dr. Ford and her family who became a lightning rod for extremists after her testimony. Ford believed that politicians would care about truth rather than being controlled by their quest for power, and she was entirely unprepared for the mistreatment she received from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the FBI.

Golden Years – How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age by James Chappel. Historian Chappel details out how old age first emerged as a distinct stage of life and how it evolved over the last century, shaped by politicians’ choices, activists’ demands, medical advancements, and the depiction of aging people in novels, films, television programs and even greeting cards. The move from seeing seniors as fragile and needy to individuals with the power and political clout to age well raises issues that we continue to grapple with today. Insightful and easy-to-read, Chappel’s book urges readers to consider how current policies and cultural attitudes might evolve to better support an aging population.

Zaytinya: Delicious Mediterranean Dishes from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon by Jose Andres. I’m a lover of Mediterranean food and a big fan of Spanish-American chef Jose Andres, so this book is on my definite short list. Based on recipes from his restaurant of the same name, Andres presents creative adaptations of the classic dishes of Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon. Drool-worthy reading at its finest.