Nonfiction November - Week 2: Book Pairings

It’s week 2 of Nonfiction November and this week’s event is being hosted by Leslie at Regular Rumination! The topic this week is Book Pairings!

This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that 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.

This one is perfect for me, because I love to ‘read more about it’. Usually it starts when I read a historical fiction book about people, places, or events that I know little or nothing about. Sometime this causes me to stop and google to learn more, but often, I want to read even more and will grab another book on the same topic. This can be fiction or nonfiction. The book I recommended last week, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott, is a good example of this. I had previously read Miss Lizzie’s War by Rosemary Agonito, a fictional account of Elizabeth Mc. When I learned that there was a nonfiction book discussing not only Elizabeth Van Lew, but also other women of the Civil War, I knew I would read this one.

Another book pairing that I highly recommend is a book pairing featuring two books about bocha posh, a custom in some regions Afghanistan and Pakistan in which a family with no male children will designate a female child to be raised as an adult. The first book I read on this subject was The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi, work of historical fiction. I was fascinated by this book. A few months later when I had a chance to read The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg, I grabbed it! This is a nonfiction book in which the author spoke with several women who had been raised as bocha posh. If you haven’t read these, I think you will find them fascinating! I know I did!