Thursday, November 15, 2018

Nonfiction November 2018--Week 2!

This event is being cohosted by the following five bloggers: 

#NonFicNov


Week 2 (November 5-9): Fiction/Nonfiction Book Pairing
Pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title.
It can be a "If you loved this book, read this!"
or just two titles you think would go well together. 
Maybe it's a historical novel and you'd like to get the real history
by reading a nonfiction version of the story.

Tayari Jones' An American Marriage and 
Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Jones takes the unjust harassment, arrest, charge, conviction, and incarceration 
of "non-whites" to the personal level, 
depicting the devestating, life-altering effects for one fictional couple.
And if you have not yet read Alexander's book, you need to do that right now!
Especially if you happen to be white! (I can say that...I am white.) :)

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Adam Hochschild's 
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa 
(This second one is nonfiction and enraged me! 
I believe it will make most readers uncomfortable at the very least...)
But we need to know our history!
Kingsolver does an excellent job of depicting "unintended consequences" 
when uninformed (and all too often very ignorant) white people 
believe they are improving indigenous people's lives!

Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk and
Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain
On the Far Side of the MountainFrightful's Mountain
My own children always loved George's books, and I recognized the accuracy of her accounts of Sam training Frightful since I had recently read Macdonald's memoir.

William Maley's What is a Refugee? and Sharon Bala's The Boat People
I have not yet read Maley's book but very much appreciated 
the nonfictional aspects of Bala's fictional account of a (literal) boatload of immigrants landing off the coast... 
I can imagine Maley's book is very informative and I would love to read it and compare.

Susan Wilson's One Good Dog and 
Bronwen Dickey's Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon
I absolutely LOVED Wilson's book and would easily read anything she writes!
(I have managed to read The Dog Who Danced and loved it!
I own two more of her books so hopefully I'll get to read them soon!)
I have yet to read Dickey's nonfiction book, but believe it would make a good pairing 
since Chance's heredity included pit bull!

How about you? 
Have you ever read a nonfiction and fiction book that you felt complemented each well?

Happy reading!
--Lynn

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