With my return to library borrowing after the snow melted, I had realized that 2026 found me reading less non-fiction than ever (well, for nearly twenty years, anyway).

And, why? If anything, I have more questions about the world than ever. So, I resolved to browse in the non-fiction (and not just the 300s and 800s either). Calling oneself a curious reader requires unleashing of one’s curiosity.

One result was Shohini Ghose’s Her Space Her Time (2023) which proved fascinating. (I even watched her TED Talk on Quantum Computing.) She begins by noting that just 90 Black women have PhDs in physics in the United States out of 60,000 degrees awarded between 1972 and 2017. And, as of 2023, there’s not a single Black woman holding a professorship in physics or astronomy in Canada. (Ghose herself is a prof at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and she was routinely the only woman of colour as an international student in the United States—in Florida and New Mexico.)

She offers a lot of facts but focusses on relationships, so it was surprisingly compelling. In short, she presents a narrative (often about how/where the women stumbled/backed into this sphere) and hooked me on story.

What have I retained? Honestly, not a lot! Partly because I raced through this, in a state of excitement twinned with disbelief that almost all of this was news (sometimes centuries later). Partly because I need to layer new information, and this was new territory.

As it turns out: physics is not boring and it’s never been the exclusive domain of men even though women’s names have been routinely (and sometimes deliberately) omitted (and sometimes excised) from the historical record. Here are the women discussed, and I’d love to know how many you recognise:

Annie Jump Cannon, Anna Draper, Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the Women of the Harvard College Observatory, Henrietta Leavitt, Margaret Burbidge, Mary Golda Ross, Joyce Neighbors, Dilhan Eryurt, Claudia Alexander, the Women Who Powered NASA’s Space Program, Harriet Brooks, Marie  Sklodowska-Curie, Lise Meitner, Marietta Blau, Hertha Warnbacher, Bibha Chowdhuri, Elise Frota-Pessoa, Maria Mitchell, Vera Rubin, Wu Chievn-Shiung, and the Women of the Atomic Age.

Alongside these women’s stories, Ghose also explains relevant concepts. (I think I finally understand parallax: for reals.) And she also presents context, mentioning for instance that one in four married women went to work after America entered WWII in 1941 and, by 1943, women comprised 2/3 of the aviation workforce. As a way of introducing Mary Golda-Ross, one new recruit (and a descendant of the Anigiduwagi/Cherokee leader John Ross). Ghose has a great instinct for providing just enough information to allow for a foundation to take shape and, strangely, despite my inherent resistance to non-fiction reading, I can easily imagine rereading this cover-to-cover (and, hopefully, retaining more of it) and then seeking out related books.

Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic (2011) landed in my stack because I’ve enjoyed her writing on fairy tales and other literature; her work on the Arabian Nights is divided into five parts (the fifth being about the magic of flight, which is why I chose to photograph it with the NYT spread focusing on Charles Ross’s land art) and I found it quite interesting. In theory it should have been a more comfortable read, pulled from the 398s, but because I don’t know the Arabian Nights very well, all the history and talk of versions and previous studies was as new-to-me as talk of physics (and the supporting material in the back amounts to more than 100 pages).

The sheer bookishness pulled me through the exposition about literary and historical roots and connections, as did the personal disclosures (her favourite tales and characters) and links to modern publications (from Dick King-Smith’s The Sheep-Pig to Barrack Obama’s memoir). If you’ve read more of the stories from the Arabian Nights, this is one for you.

For some insight on Latin American and Spanish-language writing, I chose José Saramago’s The Notebook, his writings from 2008 (translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Daniel Hahn in 2010). It was there: thoughts on Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Jorge Amado (Brazil), and Borges (Argentina), for instance. Along with plenty of bookishness: from the publishing fairs in Lisbon and Frankfurt, to talk of poets from Pessoa to Darwish, to talk of books on shelves and in shops (like the Livraria Cultura in Brazil), and summer reading in lieu of a holiday.

What I wasn’t expecting to find was writing about an American president who “expelled truth from the world, establishing the age of lies that now flourishes in its place”. Writing about the Left: “It doesn’t act, it doesn’t risk taking a step.” and writing about Gaza: “Let every demonstrator bear in mind that the violence, humiliation, and scorn that the Palestinians have been victims of from the Israelis has been going on for sixty years without interruption.” Go ahead: check the date. (I did.) An unexpectedly relevant and engaging volume.

Also unexpectedly interesting was Peter Wohlleben’s The Weather Detective (2010; translated by Ruth Ahmedzai-Kemp, 2018) which drew my attention because of The Hidden Life of Trees. It’s written for the common reader rather than a science-y sort, and I learned why daisies close up during the rain (to protect their pollen so it will be there later for the bees) and how (there are two separate rows of petals, that are constantly growing to facilitate the mechanic of open-close).

I also learned that the nursery rhyme about red skies is correct (and why) and that the saying about swallows (when they fly high…) is not. AND… that our garden beds move by 24-32 inches “in the course of a day”? Because of the pull of the moon and tides, even though it can only be measured with sophisticated equipment. This blew my mind even though I can’t even properly articulate how/why. If you read the book, maybe you can explain it to me! If you enjoy Margaret Renkl but wish she wasn’t so sad, you’ll probably like his books.

A typical browse at the library mostly hits the same markers each time, choosing a starting point based on who else is browsing and shifting without thinking. Disrupting that, forcing myself to browse the non-fiction, required a separate trip. On the heels of having recently chosen many other books–more typical choices. And I had to set aside ideas I’ve absorbed about marketing–little clues I follow based on artwork and titles to guess whether a book will be a good match. And I depended on the very jacket copy I deliberately avoid with fiction.

This is probably going to be a slim non-fiction year for me anyway, but I’m glad to have tried these. Have you found a new way to #LoveYourLibrary lately? (Hosted by Bookish Beck on the last Monday of each month.)