Non-fiction November: Become the Expert

This is my second discussion post for Non-Fiction November, an exciting event celebrating non-fiction hosted by Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness and Leslie at Regular Ruminations. Every Monday this month, a discussion question will be posted. Then each Friday there will be a link-up for discussion posts and non-fiction reviews, with each linky entry entered in a prize drawing at the end of the month! Today’s topic is…

Non-Fiction November: Favorite Reads

Today is my first post for Non-Fiction November, an exciting event celebrating non-fiction hosted by Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness and Leslie at Regular Ruminations. Every Monday this month, a discussion question will be posted. Then each Friday there will be a link-up for discussion posts and non-fiction reviews, with each linky entry entered in a prize drawing at the end of the month! Today’s topic is

Three Tips for Reading Historical Non-Fiction

This week I jumped into historical non-fiction for the first time and as some of you may have gathered from this post , I found the experience a little intimidating!  Fortunately, with lots of help from the internet, I made it through – something which turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying experience.  So today I’m going to share with you what I learned, in hopes you won’t need to start a book feeling as lost as I did 🙂

1 – Orient Yourself in Time
My biggest problem when I started reading was that I really wanted to learn something from this book, but I had no prior knowledge of what was happening in the late 1500’s.  I also didn’t know much about when other important events took place in relation the the 1500’s.  Fortunately, I’m not as totally hopeless about history as I may sound, so I was pretty sure I just needed to find a website that gave me a timeline of events to help give me some context.  While searching, I came across this wonderful website which lets you view important world events broken down by era and geographical region.  For instance, I learned that living the late 1500’s Tycho and Kepler were living after the war of the roses, the Spanish Armada, the gun powder plot, and Joan of Arc.  It was really helpful and I highly recommend this as a place to start if you’re feeling lost in time!