However, it kind of went downhill form there, the first non-ficiton of the year was Nick Offerman's "Paddle Your Own Canoe" a kind of memoir and advice book. The trouble was that it came of extremely preachy, and most of his success came from other people covering for him, or giving him a shot, all the time while saying things like working hard are how to get ahead. It just left a bad taste in my mouth when someone claims that their hard work got them to where they are while having lucky breaks like an entire group of actors and a manager covering for you while you were arrested for petty shoplifting for fun. The book would have been great if Nick would have written it with a bit more humility I think, something he pretends to have throughout the book, all the while spouting about his hard work and implying how great he is.
Count of Monte Cristo I was super excited about, and had such a great beginning, throughout the entire prison and escape I was so excited to keep going. But then the book turns into a serious of coincidences that are just hard to swallow. Things outside of the protagonist's control just keep happening in his favor, maybe it was supposed to highlight his "divine providence" he was supposed to personify, maybe it was just the style at the time to have incredible coincidences be a major plot device, but the book was just too long for so many of the major plot moments to seem to happen on their own.
And then I tried a book called "the willpower instinct". Which I downloaded as an audiobook. Which was promised to:
"explain the new science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity. Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, The Willpower Instinct explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters."
The first twenty minutes are the author explaining how awesome her class is, and how many people it's helped. Then it turns into a self help seminar complete with "complete this stage of the worksheet now" type of learning. It marketed itself as a psychology book when it's completely a self-help seminar book you'd pick up after attending a one day conference. I only spent half a credit from Audible on it and still feel robbed. I understand that if you're looking for a self-help book it's probably great, but I just couldn't get over feeling like I was tricked into the book.
Other non-notable non-fictions I went through this year included the great "What If?" by Randall Munroe (creator of XKCD), and Super Freakonomics. Both were incredibly short, but some of the best audiobooks I've listened to while stuck in traffic. Nice and pallet cleansing between Sci-Fi books.
