Nonfiction November: Pairing Up

 

I've been looking forward to Nonfiction November since last year, and yet here it is nearly halfway through the month and I have yet to post.  

This week Nonfiction November is hosted by Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home and is focused on book pairs.  

Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title (or whatever you want to pair up). Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or (because I’m doing this myself) two books on two different areas have chimed and have a link. You can be as creative as you like! 

At various points while reading I can think of tons of books that would make a good fiction/nonfiction pairing, or adult/YA pair, or nonfiction/nonfiction pair, and yet I find it hard to do when put on the spot.  

I love reading books about the First Ladies and this past year I've found a fictionalized version of Edith Wilson's life as well as a biography.

Edith Wilson's life was interesting to read about - both as a biography and fictionalized.  While I know Wood's book was not entirely factual, I liked that it fleshed things out.  No matter which version, Edith Wilson was remarkable.

One of my favorite memoirs of this year is One Day I'll Grow Up And Be A Beautiful Woman by Abi Maxwell who writes of her child who was born a boy, but transitioned to being a girl. I felt like her viewpoint was so honest and heartfelt- and that she is someone who I would enjoy knowing.

The fiction book by Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is was a novel I read several years ago now, but still think about and also was so impressed with at the time I read it. It makes a very hot-button topic more understandable and provided readers with the ability to see families going through a child's transition as just like the rest of us.  

My third pairing is a nonfiction memoir by Amanda Jones who as a school librarian faced a great deal of public outrage (as well as threatening emails and hate on social media) as she defended the right to leave library books on the shelves and worked hard to stand against book bans. As a school librarian this is a topic that is timely as many of us are also watching our states pass laws to ban books.

Shortly after reading That Librarian, I read the middle grade novel Not Another Banned Book by Dana Alison Levy.  This one really hit home as I lead student book clubs every day at school.  When Ms. Lewiston's gets in trouble for reading Ghost Boys with her students and put on leave by the district, I could envision this happening to me.  This would be a great book to read with my students who are hearing about book bans for the first time and luckily have not been personally affected by them.

I could certainly come up with more book pairings.  If I were thinking ahead I'd make sure to jot them down as the year goes by.  We'll see if I can get that organized in 2025?!