We’re revisiting one of our newer discussion prompts this week with host Christopher of Plucked From the Stacks and talking about nonfiction that you’d find too unbelievable if it were fiction. This prompt made me realize that I’ve done a decent amount of depressingly real nonfiction reading this year, but I did find a few fun ones for the discussion today!
Book Pairing :This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title (or another nonfiction!). 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. Or pair a book with a podcast, film or documentary, TV show, etc. on the same topic or stories that pair together.
Gilded-Age Drama
The Scandalous Hamiltons isn’t the best book I read this year, but it is one of the most unbelievable. To repeat the beginning of my review “This story of a woman who tricked Alexander Hamilton’s great-grandson into marrying her by purchasing a baby from a baby farm is almost too incredible to be true.”
Glamourous Adventures
This memoir of an era when flight attendants were viewed as incredibly glamorous, when the job meant good pay and an unusual amount of freedom for young women, feels to me like something out of a movie. This wasn’t a completely rosy view – the author shows the sexism and body shaming that were accepted parts of the job – but it’s such a different time that it also felt hard to believe.
Journalism in the Middle East
I Was Told to Come Alone was my favorite of several books on women doing journalism in the Middle East. What made this book feel almost unreal to me was that this author and at least one of the other authors I read had been kidnapped and survived to tell about it. It also seems like it’s not entirely uncommon for this to happen to reporters in this part of the world and for them to then keep on doing this dangerous job. To me, that bravery and the attitude that this is just a thing that happens made this book feel a little surreal.
Christopher @ Plucked from the Stacks
I had the exact same experience this year—I read so much depressingly real nonfiction, but narrowed it down to mostly fun ones. But I love that you included I Was Told to Come Alone. I think I read half that book with my mouth hanging open. Just an absolutely wild story.
Christopher @ Plucked from the Stacks recently posted…Nonfiction November 2022: Stranger Than Fiction
DoingDewey
Yes! I guess the fun ones are more surprising to me, haha. I’m glad to hear that you also enjoyed I Was Told to Come Alone!
Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out
All three of these are new to me, thanks for sharing your recommendations
Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out recently posted…Nonfiction November: Stranger Than Fiction
DoingDewey
Always happy to recommend a bunch of books! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Liz Dexter
Wow, those are three amazing ones indeed! I had a couple of negatively shocking and a couple of positively shocking (or both!) on my list. A fun week to do!
Liz Dexter recently posted…Book review – Mo Wilde – “The Wilderness Cure”
DoingDewey
Thanks Liz! I fell behind on checking out everyone’s post last month, so I’m still looking forward to seeing what all you picked 😀
Jenna @ Falling Letters
A baby from a baby farm? 🤨 Definitely sounds like a ‘stranger than fiction’ read, haha. FLY GIRL sounds like something I might have to pick up. Every time I fly, I have a moment of wishful ‘nostalgia’ imagining how different the experience of flying used to be…
Jenna @ Falling Letters recently posted…11 Books About the Social Internet [Nonfiction November]
DoingDewey
Yeah, The Scandalous Hamiltons was pretty wild! It sounds like there was a lot of sexism and other bad things happening with airlines in the second book, but I do wish flying still felt like a luxury for normal people, instead of just feeling so cramped.
Molly
I definitely need to check out Fly Girl!
DoingDewey
It was a fun one!
CurlyGeek
The book by Mekhennet sounds terrifying, but definitely something I want to read about. Thanks for the recommendations!
DoingDewey
Reading her story, I can’t believe anyone is a war journalist! It’s definitely a career for someone braver than me.
Helen Murdoch
Good choices for the prompt. The Scandalous Hamiltons sounds particularly crazy.
Helen Murdoch recently posted…Nonfiction Review: The Watermen: The Birth of American Swimming and One Young Man’s Fight to Capture Olympic Gold by Michael Loynd
DoingDewey
It truly was!