American history is full of grand moments, terrible moments and what were they thinking moments. The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice is about one of those strange moments in history made even more bizarre by of the actions of carnival huckster who turned out to be a bigamist and a criminal. From the book jacket:

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island unearths the forgotten story of the Igorrotes, a group of “headhunting, dog-eating savages” from the Philippines, who were transported to New York in 1905 by the charming, opportunistic doctor-turned-showman Truman K. Hunt. They appeared as “human exhibits” alongside the freaks and curiosities at Coney Island’s Luna Park. … By the end of that first summer season at Coney, the sideshow scheme had made Hunt a rich man. But he was also a man who liked to live large, and his fortune was dwarfed only by his ability to spend it. Soon he would be on the run with the tribe in tow, pursued by ex-wives, creditors, and the tireless agents of American justice.

That is a big book summary, and in almost all respects The Lost Tribe of Coney Island delivers with a story that is funny, frustrating and curious in equal measures.

I loved the way that Prentice slowly revealed the depth of Truman Hunt’s deceptions and dishonesty. As the story begins, he appears to be a savvy businessman, although looking back it’s fair to question the motives of someone who would bring humans across the ocean for display at a carnival. As the story progresses, it becomes clear Hunt is not the person he claims to be — his actions make him among the scummier people I’ve ever encountered in a nonfiction book.

For their part, the Igorrotes are equally interesting, with their own motivations for participating in the charade. Prentice gives a lot of space to their story, which I enjoyed. It would be easy to think of them as simple natives, duped by a white man who wasn’t honest with them. And while much of that is true — Hunt is a liar and a cheat — the Igorrotes would have gained a lot financially from their display at Coney Island if he’d actually followed the contract.

The one respect where I struggled with the book is an issue I’ve mentioned before, the level of citations needed in narrative nonfiction. In the introduction, Prentice notes that this story is full of frustrating gaps in the historical record, and the records that are available are inaccurate or open to question. She also writes that she describes the “thoughts, feelings and motivations” of some characters based on “close consideration” of her research.

While I understand that writing an engaging narrative history will require some leaps, I felt like moments in this book went too far in areas where it wasn’t necessary. For example, this is part of a brief scene that describes Hunt getting on a train in the morning:

The showman stepped on the train to Coney and immediately felt his mood improve as he caught the eye of a pretty stranger sitting near the door. He tipped his had in her direction and flashed her a broad smile. He couldn’t resist. It was Friday and he felt his equilibrium restoring. … He was distracted momentarily as the pretty woman got up to leave the train. Truman smiled, his blue eyes following her as she walked over to the door. She smiled back and was gone.”

There’s no citation for this story in the notes, and while it seems to be in character with what the rest of the book reveals about Hunt and his treatment of women, I found it jarring — why even include a scene like this that seems almost impossible to properly attribute?

These moments were frustrating to read in a book like this one because I don’t think the story needs those details. I don’t like when I get pulled out a story wondering what is true and what’s not when it doesn’t seem important. Truman Hunt and his treatment of the Igorrotes in his care is a strange, maddening, truly interesting story that could stand on it’s own based on the documentation available — I wish the book would have let that happen.

Other Tour Stops: Booksie’s Blog (Oct. 13) | Kahakai Kitchen (Oct. 14 | Time 2 Read (Oct. 14) | Patricia’s Wisdom (Oct. 15) | 50 Book Project (Oct. 16) | Padre Steve (Oct. 17) | girlichef (Oct. 20) | Wordsmithonia (Oct. 20) | Svetlana’s Reads and Views (Oct. 21) | She Treads Softly (Oct. 22) | Diary of a Stay at Home Mom (Oct. 23) | Dwell in Possibility (Oct. 24) | BookNAround (Oct. 27) | Mental Foodie (Oct. 27) | Lisa’s Yarns (Oct. 28) | A Bookish Affair (Oct. 29) |

Time and Place | 12:15 p.m. on my couch with my laptop and the Vikings game

Eating and Drinking |  Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups — I need to find some real lunch soon.

Reading | I didn’t have nearly enough reading time this week, but when I did grab a book I picked up The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice (Oct. 14 from New Harvest). I’m on a book tour for the book tomorrow, so I’ll share thoughts then. I’m not sure what I’ll pick up next.

Watching | It’s been all Gilmore Girls all the time this week.

Listening | I needed a light audio book, so I grabbed Rob Lowe’s memoir Stories I Only Tell My Friends. So far it’s really delightful — just the right mix of true confessions, Hollywood gossip, and self-reflection that I like in a celebrity memoir.

Cooking | One of my coworkers gave me a huge bag of apples — I see a lot of apple sauce and apple crisp in my future.

Blogging | This week I shared some of my thoughts on why I think it’s important to pay attention to diversity in reading. I even made a chart to help illustrate my point.

Promoting | Nonfiction November is coming back again this year! I’m excited to be hosting this fun event with three other bloggers — Leslie (Regular Rumination), Katie (Doing Dewey), and Rebecca (I’m Lost In Books). It should be a lot of fun.

Hating | It is definitely fall in Minnesota… I woke up to frost on my windshield a couple of mornings this week. Ugh.

Loving | My sister and I went to go see Home Free, a country a cappella band, in concert this week. It was delightful.

Preparing | A professor friend of mine invited me to speak to her book publishing class about book blogging this week. It feels a little weird to be talking to non-bloggers about book blogging, but I’m also excited about it.

Wanting | I would really love for the Vikings to get a win today.

Waiting | We have a really great one-screen movie theater in my town that does a decent job of bringing in new releases. But… no Gone Girl yet. I’m excited to see that one.

Anticipating | I am still super excited about the Readathon coming up next weekend. I’m starting to put my book pile together — I’ll be sharing it this week!

Last year, my dear book blogging friend Leslie (Regular Rumination) asked me if I’d be interested in joining her in a personal challenge to read and write exclusively about nonfiction in November. After we talked a little more, we decided that it would be fun to open up the project to host a low-key celebration of nonfiction during the month of November.

I’m so excited to officially tell you that Nonfiction November will be back again this year, with two more co-hosts — Katie (Doing Dewey) and Rebecca (I’m Lost In Books) will each be hosting one week this month.

The format for Nonfiction November will be largely the same as it was last year. On the Monday of each week in November, one of us will put up a post with the weekly discussion topic. The post will have a place to share links with responses to the topic OR reviews of nonfiction books that are posted during the week. On the Friday of each week, the weekly host will do a roundup of submissions to peruse.

To get people excited (or to have a chance to prepare), here are the topics we’ve selected:

Week 1: November 3 to 7 (Hosted by Kim)

Your Year in Nonfiction: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

Week 2: November 10 to 14 (Hosted by Leslie)

Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert: Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

Week 3: November 17 to 21 (Hosted by Rebecca)

Diversity and Nonfiction: What does “diversity” in books mean to you? Does it refer to book’s location or subject matter? Or is it the author’s nationality or background? What countries/cultures do you tend to enjoy or read about most in your nonfiction? What countries/cultures would you like nonfiction recommendations for? What kind of books besides different countries/cultures do you think of as books of diversity?

Week 4: November 24 to 28 (Hosted by Katie)

New to My TBR: It’s been a week full of amazing nonfiction books! Which ones have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book!

It should be pretty simple. A post to accept links will go up on Monday. Share your discussion topic or review of a nonfiction book any time during the week. Check out all of the great nonfiction posts throughout the week or in a roundup on Friday. If you want to focus your reading on nonfiction, that would be awesome too, but that is certainly not required. (If you’re a blogger, feel free to grab the button above for use in all of your Nonfiction November posts).

A Nonfiction Readalong

One of my goals for this year was to find a way to open up Nonfiction November to people who are not bloggers. After some discussion, we decided that we’d try doing a readalong in November — and we need your help picking the book!

Each of us chose one of our favorite books, or a book that we are excited to read, as a possible selection for our readalong. As a bonus, they’re all books that are also out in paperback. Please follow THIS LINK to a poll where you can vote for the book you’d like us all to read together. The book with the most votes by early next week will be our selection. We’re still working out details on how the readalong will work, but I for one am really excited about. So go vote by following the link above.

I hope you’ll join us for an awesome month of exploring and celebrating nonfiction!

Since 2010, I’ve been very intentional about keeping track of all the books I read, along with some basic statistics about them. In addition to things like genre and format, I also tracked, primarily out of curiosity, author gender. As it turns out, without much intentional effort, I tend to read about equal or slightly more books by women than men. I think this is great, and I love that this balance happens for me without having to be deliberate about it. As the VIDA counts show us, this is not the case for all readers and reviewers.

One thing that I haven’t tracked consistently is the race of the authors I read. I didn’t think much about it because I figured that a great book was a great book, regardless of the gender or ethnicity of the author. I probably would have continued on that way without the pushing and passionate arguments of the writers over at Book Riot, who have made it a priority this year to include diversity in reading and coverage at the site.

While I still believe that a great book is a great book, I recently realized that my personal book-seeking habits are not conducive to finding great books by authors of color. I want to change that.

I’ve had trouble articulating this problem in my head, so I ended up making a chart that tries to explain how my limited reading of diverse authors is a result of intentional and unintentional filters that limit which books I end up reading.

Basically, there are a lot of books in the world. There are fewer books that I actually hear about. There are even fewer books that I remember, fewer books that I acquire and fewer books that I read. And since authors of color are underrepresented at every level of that chart, they are underrepresented in my reading life.

I’m really happy to know that many of the bloggers I trust for recommendations read voraciously and widely. Reading diversely has been a priority for many of them for a long time, and I appreciate and benefit from their suggestions. However, surveys and almost all anecdotal data show that the publishing industry as a whole has a diversity problem. There are also gaps in the number of authors of color (and female authors) that are represented in major awards.

Given those facts, it seems obvious that there is a whole group of authors who are just not coming to my attention. I just won’t see many of the great books by authors of color because they aren’t getting the same kind of publicity push as books by white authors. Admitting my reading has a diversity problem isn’t necessarily a dig on me because it’s a result of some much bigger forces at work in the way books are marketed and discussed.

With that in mind, I again agree with my colleagues over at Book Riot: the way I can help this systemic problem is to personally seek out more writing by authors of color. Then when I share the books that I love, they will be more diverse simply because I am paying better attention to those choices.

And I have some numbers to show that paying attention matters. Between 2010 and 2013 I read 423 books, but only about 20 of those (less than five percent) were by authors of color. Since I started to read just a little more intentionally in 2014, I’ve picked up 12 books by authors of color – about 16 percent of my total reading life. It’s not enough, yet, but it’s getting better because I’ve committed to paying attention.

And that’s, I think, the best thing each of us as readers can do: simply pay more attention to what we buy and read and share. If we make intentional choices to bring more diversity into our reading, it will start to change publishing for the better.