Looking back on my teaser posts I think I must jinx myself. Almost all my recent teasers have been from books I've set aside (or not yet finished reading). Do I dare share a teaser today, especially since it is a from a nonfiction book and I've got an even worse track record when it comes to reading (and more--finishing) anything short of a novel or mystery these days. We'll just put it down to my year of uneven reading and leave it at that.
I did finish reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which is technically nonfiction, though it must surely fit squarely into that 'creative nonfiction' category since it reads like a very good novel. It's a really excellent book and gripping but I also found it quite disturbing as well--and extremely sad. While I mull it all over (thanks to Litlove, who wrote about the book here, for giving me a gentle push to finally read the book which has sat for years on my bookshelves), I think I need something a little gentler and more optimistic to follow it up.
I very much like the sound of Dorothy Wickenden's Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. She writes about two friends, who in 1916 decide they'd prefer to travel west to Colorado and work as teachers rather than live the boring life of society women. The author, who is the granddaughter of one of the women constructs her biography from the letters the women wrote home.
Since I am literally just finishing one book and picking up another I've not yet properly started reading, so my teaser is just the opening paragraph.
July 27, 1916
"A passenger train pulled into the Hayden depot at 10:45 P.M. with a piercing squeal of brakes, a long whistle, and the banging of steel shoes against couplers. The ground shook as the train settled the tracks, releasing black plumes from the smokestack and foggy white steam from the pipes. The Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railway, popularly known as the Moffat Road, had reached Hayden just three years earlier. Until then, Colorado's Western Slope was accessible only by stagecoach, wagon, horseback, and foot. Despite the hulking locomotive, the train didn't look quite up to the twelve-hour journey it had just made over some of the most treacherous passes and peaks of the Rocky Mountains. It consisted of four cars with an observation deck attached to the end. Inside the parlor car, several passengers remained. Hayden was the second-to-last stop on the line."
"Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, seasoned travelers in Europe but new to the American West, peered out the window into a disconcerting darkness, unsure whether it was safe to step outside."
This looks promising to me, and I hope it is a good fit or else it might go the same way as so many other books this year.
Just out of curiosity (and I might need some good nonfiction suggestions), what has been your favorite nonfiction read of the year?