This is usually my comfort zone. I'm a big reader of non-fiction (which always makes me think I'm less of a "serious reader" somehow), and short story collections. Of the best non-fiction of 2013, I nominate Keren Green's beautifully spare. Bough Down. Green is the widow of David Foster Wallace, and Bough Down is a poignant treatise on grief and love.
My favorite re-discovery of 2013 was Joe Brainard's I Remember. It's simply a series of memories -- some profound, some trivial, with the preface "I remember." I'm not usually a fan of memoir boiled down to aphoristic statements, but this was funny and charming and serious and all points in between.
Although it was published in 2012, I also really enjoyed Andrew Solomon's Far From The Tree. It got some pretty mixed reviews, but I think a lot of the information in here was valuable in a 101, palatable-for-the-masses way. The chapter on trangender kids could have been done better -- and has been by many trans* writers -- but I accept that this isn't supposed to be a deep exploration of any of the topic covered: autism, crime, schizophrenia, but for the sheer breath of topics covered, it stands as an accomplishment on its own.
I'm probably in the minority on this one, but I really liked Marie Calloway's what purpose did i server in your life. At least, I didn't actively hate it as much as other people did. Most of the criticism, it seemed, was the same old nonsense heaped at women who dare to write about their lives, no matter how messy. I would advise against parsing this through a feminist lens and just take it for what it is -- that I'm much older than Calloway, I think, allows me some distance, but honestly, I didn't have the expected visceral reaction.
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