Signing-up post for the Nonfiction Challenge 2016

I came to the realisation some time ago that I was slacking off in my reading. It's not that I have been reading any fewer books than usual, but that, given a choice, I have been going for the less demanding books: short rather than long, easy subjects over hard, entertainment over substance etc., like choosing dessert every time and ignoring the main course. Of course every reader needs the equivalent of dessert every now and then, but such books don't provide the mental nourishment and challenges that can be had from the literary equivalent of a main dish. 

For example, I haven't read, or indeed touched, a science book in months, and looking at my reading log I find I have only read three non-fiction books this year. Of those, one is a collection of quotations and another a photography book. This is out of 117 books read so far, when non-fiction has usually been somewhere in the 12-15% range of my overall reading each year. Plus, I haven't read a single book, fiction or non-, longer than 400 pages since some time last year.

It's too late in the year to be thinking of a challenge to read long books, but when I realised that several of the possible reads for the What’s in a Name challenge I signed up for on Friday were non-fiction, I decided to sign up for a non-fiction reading challenge as well and chose this one: Nonfiction Reading Challenge 2016.

I’m signing up for the Dilettante level to begin with, but if it goes well I’ll level up to Explorer. 

Although some of the books I found could be used for both challenges, I decided to keep them separate.

The rest of the very simple rules can be found in the sign-up post on the hosting blog.

Dilettante--Read 1-5 non-fiction books:

Planning to read:

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher

Bon Appétit! Travels through France with knife, fork and corkscrew by Peter Mayle

Am reading:

The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson

Additional reads: Non-fiction books I have started to read and then put aside for one reason or another, and/or rejects from the other challenge.

Explorer--Read 6-10:

Rejects from the other challenge and additional books as needed.
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Edit (28.08.2016):
Books read so far:
The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson
Bon Appétit! Travels through France with knife, fork and corkscrew by Peter Mayle
Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher