November is always a busy time in the book blogging world and one of the many reading events taking place this month is Nonfiction November. Non-fiction doesn’t form a large part of my reading, but I find that taking part in this event helps me to focus on the non-fiction I’ve read and would like to read, so it’s still worthwhile for me. Each week throughout November, one of the challenge hosts will post a different topic for participants to discuss. I probably won’t have time to join in with all of them, but this week’s topic is an easy one:

Week 1: (November 1-5) – Your Year in Nonfiction with Rennie at What’s Nonfiction: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

So far this year I have read the following six non-fiction books, a mixture of history, science, biography and self-help:

The Light Ages by Seb Falk – a look at the progress of science, philosophy and invention in the medieval period

The Fall of the House of Byron by Emily Brand – a biography of the ancestors of the poet Lord Byron.

The Killer of the Princes in the Tower by MJ Trow – a new solution to one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale – the story of a woman who claims to be experiencing paranormal events in her London home.

Live Alone and Like It by Marjorie Hillis – a 1930s guide for single women who live alone.

Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier – the memoir of one of my favourite authors.

Of these, I think the book I enjoyed most was probably Live Alone and Like It. For a book published in 1936, a lot of the advice is still surprisingly relevant today!

This month, although I do have several other non-fiction books on my TBR, I’m going to concentrate on finishing a very long book I started a few weeks ago – Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones.

Are you taking part in Nonfiction November this year?

For Week 3 of Nonfiction November, the topic is as follows:

Week 3: (Nov 11 to 15) – Be the Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (hosted by Doing Dewey)

Three ways to join in this week! You can share 3 or more books on a single topic that you’ve read and can recommend (be the expert); you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you’ve been dying to read (ask the expert); or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

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I don’t read enough non-fiction to be able to call myself an expert on any topic, but here are three books I’ve read on Victorian true crimes. I enjoyed them all, particularly the third one.

Murder by the Book by Claire Harman

This book looks at some possible links between the murder of Lord William Russell in London in 1840 and the influence of the popular crime novels of the time known as ‘Newgate Novels’. In particular, Harman discusses the book Russell’s murderer was thought to have been reading just before committing the crime: Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth. I was disappointed by the true crime aspects of this book, but loved learning more about the Newgate Novels!

The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale

This book is on a very similar subject. It deals with a murder committed by a thirteen-year-old boy in London’s East End in 1895 and how blame was placed on the availability of cheap adventure novels, or ‘penny dreadfuls’ as they were known. I’ve also read and enjoyed Kate Summerscale’s more famous The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, an account of the Road Hill House Murder of 1860.

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell

This fascinating book explores the life of the eccentric, reclusive 5th Duke of Portland and the sensational claim of Anna Maria Druce that the Duke was actually the alter ego of her father-in-law, T.C. Druce. The story is as bizarre as the title would suggest and involves secret wives and illegitimate children, fraud and forgery, stolen evidence and unreliable witnesses, lies and deception and double identities. I loved it!

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Now I’m going to ‘Ask the Expert’…

Have you read any of these books – or any other books about Victorian true crimes? Which ones would you recommend?

For Week 2 of Nonfiction November, the topic is as follows:

Week 2: (Nov 4 to 8) – Fiction / Nonfiction Book Pairing (hosted by Sarah’s Bookshelves)

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.

I have chosen three of the non-fiction books I’ve read so far this year and paired each of them with a novel that I think is a good match.

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Following in the Footsteps of Henry Tudor by Phil Carradice/The Tudor Crown by Joanna Hickson

Earlier in the week, I reviewed this new biography of Henry VII which focuses on his years in exile and his march to the battlefield at Bosworth in 1485 where he would defeat Richard III and become king of England. A good fictional accompaniment would be Joanna Hickson’s The Tudor Crown, which covers the same period. Although my own sympathies tend to be with Richard III and the House of York, Hickson almost managed to make me like Henry Tudor!

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Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry by Arthur C. Wright/Gildenford by Valerie Anand

We know that the Bayeux Tapestry tells the story of the Norman Conquest and Battle of Hastings, but Arthur C. Wright’s book looks at the often-ignored images in the margins of the Tapestry and discusses what they add to our knowledge of the period. A fiction title which goes well with this book is Gildenford by Valerie Anand as it’s set in the years just prior to the Conquest. I have the second book in the series, The Norman Pretender, ready to read soon.

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Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life by Rose Tremain/The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

Another of my recent non-fiction reads was the author Rose Tremain’s childhood memoir, Rosie. In the book, Tremain talks about her memories of visiting Switzerland at the age of seven and later being sent to ‘finishing school’ there. Her 2016 novel, The Gustav Sonata, is set in Switzerland, which I think makes these two books a good pair.

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Can you think of any good fiction/non-fiction book pairings?

I enjoyed taking part in Nonfiction November for the first time last year, so I thought I would join in again this year. This event runs for five weeks, with five weekly discussion topics, giving us a chance to highlight and talk about our non-fiction reads. Our hosts for 2019 are Katie of Doing Dewey, Julz of Julz Reads, Rennie of What’s Nonfiction, Sarah of Sarah’s Book Shelves, and Leann of Shelf Aware.

This week’s topic is:

Week 1: (Oct. 28 to Nov. 1) – Your Year in Nonfiction (hosted by Julz of Julz Reads):

Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

I have read six non-fiction books so far this year and five of them are history, with the other one being an author’s memoir. These are the topics I’m usually drawn to when it comes to non-fiction; I would like to be more adventurous and try something different, but I always find myself coming back to the same sort of books! Here are the links to my reviews, in the order that I posted them:

When Women Ruled the World by Kara Cooney

Margaret Tudor by Melanie Clegg

The Afterlife of King James IV by Keith J. Coleman

Richard III: Fact and Fiction by Matthew Lewis

Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry by Arthur C. Wright

Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life by Rose Tremain

Of these, my favourite was Melanie Clegg’s biography of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII and wife of James IV. I found all of the other books interesting and entertaining too, apart from When Women Ruled the World, which was supposed to be about the lives of female Egyptian pharaohs but turned out to be more concerned with women in modern politics.

As well as the books above, I have almost finished Bookworm by Lucy Mangan, which I’ve been dipping into over the last few weeks, and am halfway through Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister by Jung Chang.

I also have the following on my TBR:

Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou: A Marriage of Unequals by Amy Licence
Following in the Footsteps of Henry Tudor by Phil Carradice
The Lives of Tudor Women by Elizabeth Norton

And on my Kindle:

The Brothers York by Thomas Penn
Elizabeth Widville, Lady Grey by John Ashdown-Hill

To answer the final question above (What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?), I would be happy if I could read at least some of the books above, but I’m also hoping that visiting other participants’ posts will help me to discover other books that I might enjoy and wouldn’t have otherwise thought of picking up.

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How has your year in non-fiction been? What are the best non-fiction books you’ve read this year?

For Week 4 of Nonfiction November, we are asked to consider the following questions:

(Nov. 19 to 23) – Reads Like Fiction (hosted by Rennie at What’s Nonfiction?): Nonfiction books often get praised for how they stack up to fiction. Does it matter to you whether nonfiction reads like a novel? If it does, what gives it that fiction-like feeling? Does it depend on the topic, the writing, the use of certain literary elements and techniques? What are your favorite nonfiction recommendations that read like fiction? And if your nonfiction picks could never be mistaken for novels, what do you love about the differences?

I don’t really expect nonfiction to feel like fiction, so I tend to approach it in a different frame of mind and hoping to gain different things from it. The type of nonfiction I read most often is history and I think there does need to be a distinction between historical nonfiction and historical fiction.

When I read historical fiction I want the author to create a realistic and convincing historical setting which has been thoroughly researched and to stick to the facts as far as possible regarding things such as dates, outcomes of battles, major events, the clothes people would have worn and the food they would have eaten. However, I also want to be entertained by a good story which will take me through a range of emotions and I want the author to bring the characters to life, showing me how they thought, how they felt and what they said. When writing fiction, the author can obviously use their imagination to do these things, but with nonfiction it’s more difficult and sometimes impossible.

In Alison Weir’s biography of Elizabeth of York, for example, because there is a limit to what we can know about Elizabeth from a distance of five hundred years, there are lots of occasions where she speculates on what Elizabeth might have done or thought and uses the words ‘probably’ and ‘maybe’. This is obviously much more of a problem with nonfiction than with fiction, and although I did enjoy that book overall, I would have preferred to stick to the known facts.

Going back to the questions posed at the beginning of this post, I think there are definitely certain literary elements and techniques that can be used to give a book a more fiction-like feeling. The Plantagenets by Dan Jones is a good example: I mentioned in my review that “instead of just telling us that Henry I’s son died in a shipwreck, he describes the sails of the ship billowing in the wind, the shouts of the crew and the freezing water pouring into the ship.” This sort of detail can add life and colour and make a nonfiction book feel more like a novel.

I think it does depend on the type of nonfiction, though. Autobiographies and memoirs can often feel much more fictional than an impersonal biography of a historical figure; the author is writing about his or her own life, so they can draw on firsthand experience, they can talk about their thoughts, words and actions, and they probably don’t need to resort to imagination or speculation to fill in gaps.

One book that I think gets the fiction/nonfiction balance right and that has an element of autobiography is Wild Swans by Jung Chang. I described it in my review as “the most riveting non-fiction book I’ve ever read – I kept thinking ‘I’ll just read a few more pages’ then an hour later I was still sitting there unable to put the book down.” Because Jung Chang is writing about her own family history – her grandmother, her mother and herself – Wild Swans has a personal feel which gives it the sort of power and emotion I love in fiction. Knowing that it is a true story makes it an even more moving and compelling read.

At the other end of the scale are books that could never be mistaken for fiction and aren’t intended to be, such as reference books and books of facts and figures. Books like The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction and The Renaissance: The Best One-Hour History feel nothing like novels and I wouldn’t expect or want them to!

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What are your opinions on this? Does it matter to you whether nonfiction reads like a novel?