Week 8: Nonfiction

Assignment #1 & #2:

Read:

• Borderlands: Crossing between Fiction and Nonfiction in Readers' Advisory by Jennifer Brannen
• Reading Nonfiction for Pleasure: What Motivates Readers? by Catherine Sheldrick Ross

Watched Podcast:

• Readers' Advisory with Nonfiction produced by the Maryland State Library Resource Center

Assignment #3:

Sports

• 796's
• Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger - 796.332 B

Crime

• 363's & 364's
• Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon - 363.259 S

History

• 900's
• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson - 943.086 L

Food

• 910's
• No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach by Anthony Bourdain - 910.4 B

Assignment #4:

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets tells follows David Simon as he spends a year camped out with the Baltimore City Police Department.  This darkly humorous and violent piece of journalism is a psychological suspense and would be good for fans of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series or Thomas Harris' Hannibal series.  Homicide, combined with Simon's other popular novel, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, combined to form the basis of his hit HBO television series, The Wire, so fans of the show would also enjoy.

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger chronicles the inspirational story surrounding a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, located in the center of America's football bloodlines, where football is more important than life.  Fans of sports fiction books such as John Grisham's Calico Joe and Bernard Malamud's The Natural, or nonfiction titles such as Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, will appreciate this impassioned novel.  There has been both a movie and television series, both titled Friday Night Lights, based on the journalism from H.G. Bissinger.