GUEST POST – When Truth is Stranger than Fiction

Hi everyone! I’m Megan from Semi-Charmed Kind of Life, and I’m excited to be posting on Doing it the Open Way as part of Daire’s Non Fic November. (Great idea, lady!) Books and reading are a huge part of my blog, but I also try to find time to post about travel and other personal interests like pretty stationery. Please feel free to stop by after you read this post! 🙂 And now—for what you really came to read—the nonfiction stuff:

They say “truth is stranger than fiction.” Do you agree? I’ve compiled a list of fiction/nonfiction pairs based around certain topics. I initially wanted to do this because I’m hosting a seasonal reading challenge over at my blog, and one of the categories is to read a pair of such books. The example I used in my challenge post was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Woman Who Wasn’t There, which are both about 9/11. After soliciting ideas from my readers and perusing my local library, here are some other pairs: 

History: I’ll admit it: I love historical fiction. Once I had a few of my favorite historical fiction novels in mind, it was so easy to walk through the history section of the library and find nonfiction books to pair with them. You can also look in the back of almost any historical fiction novel and look at what sources the author used to research his or her book. Here’s just a short list of the many possibilities:

• The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory & Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII by Giles Tremlett
• The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory & Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox
• Or, you could pick something like the The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir or The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty by G.J. Meyer and pair it with any one of the many historical fiction novels about the Tudors
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King & The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by David Kaiser (inspired by reader Sarah)

• Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian & Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
• The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes & Jack the Ripper and the East End by Alex Werner (submitted by Valli)
• The Sweetest Hallelujah by Elaine Hussey & Free at Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died in the Struggle by Sara Bullard

Health: I don’t know if “health” is the best word for this category, but this is for book pairings that address medical or other conditions.

• Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem & The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (submitted by Gypsi)
• Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio & The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Joshua Hanagarne (submitted by Gypsi)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon & Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Asperger’s and an Extraordinary Mind by Daniel Tammet

Just for fun: Personally, I think this is the most fun-sounding pairing of the whole list. 🙂

• Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman & Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

Other ideas for topics include sports (e.g. a fictional book about a high school football team and Friday Night Lights), religion (e.g. Angels and Demons and a nonfiction book about the history of the Illuminati) or basically anything that interests you!

What good pairs can you think of? Thanks for letting me post today, Daire! I’m looking forward to the rest of the month’s nonfiction-based posts. 🙂