Non-Fiction Highlights of 2018

Since this month is Nonfiction November, I decided to share some non-fiction books that I've enjoyed this year. These are all autobiographies/memoirs, which wasn't intentional, but that seems to be what a lot of my non-fiction reading has consisted of lately.

The Family Nobody Wanted
The story of a family who adopted 12 children, of various ethnicities, in the 1940s/50s. A light, but uplifting read.

The Girl from Aleppo
This is the story of a young girl with cerebral palsy who fled Syria with her sister, travelling along the refugee trail across Europe to Germany. It covers her life in Syria and on the journey, with a little about adapting to life on Germany at the end. I found it a really interesting read, and would recommend it to anyone who would like to understand more about the experiences of refugees.

Too Marvellous for Words!
Julie Welch writes about what life was really like at a girls' boarding school in 1960s England. (It wasn't quite like an Enid Blyton story, except for the midnight feasts.)

Patricia St. John Tells Her Own Story
The story of Patricia St. John, who was a missionary nurse in Morocco and also wrote children's books, some of which were among my favourites as a child. I was especially interested in reading about how she came to write each of her books, but I the rest was interesting too.

Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me
Karen Swallow Prior writes about the books that helped shape her as a person, intertwining it with stories from her life. I found this a stimulating and thought-provoking read and it has made me want to go and read the books she includes that I haven't yet read - which is most of them - which is an achievement as some I wasn't really interested in before. (They are all fairly well known classics.)

Nonfiction November: Fiction/Non-Fiction Pairings

This month is Nonfiction November, hosted by Doing Dewey, Julz Reads, Sarah's Bookshelves, Sophisticated Dorkiness, and What's Nonfiction?

This week we are invited to pair up fiction and non-fiction books. I struggled to do this with books that I've read, so have included some from my TBR.

Sisters of the Quantock Hills by Ruth Elwin Harris/Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

The fiction selection here is a series of books about four sisters centred around World War I (the first is The Silent Shore, or Sarah's Story in the US). Testament of Youth is the true story of Vera Brittain's experience in WWI, which I'm currently reading.

The Abbess of Whitby by Jill Dalladay/Aiden, Bede, Cuthbert by David Adam
The Abbess of Whitby is a fictionalized version of the story of Hilda of Whitby, which I found a very interesting read. The second book is one I have yet to read, but the three men whose lives it recounts lived also lived in Northumbria around Hild's time, and at least one of them appears as a character in The Abbess of Whitby, so it seems an appropriate pairing.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen/Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England by Roy & Lesley Adkins

I could have chosen any Jane Austen book for this one really! Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England is a fun look at what life was actually like during Jane Austen's lifetime. I haven't yet read the whole thing, as it's a book that can be easily dipped in and out of, but it's one I keep meaning to get back to.

The Queen of Last Hopes by Susan Higginbotham/Lancaster and York by Alison Weir
The Queen of Last Hopes is a novel about Margaret of Anjou, wife to Henry VI, the Lancastrian king during the Wars of the Roses. So it fits well with a non-fiction book about the same time period. (I also enjoyed The Sunne in Splendour, but I think Lancaster and York only covers the period up to 1471, well before Richard III came to the throne, so it fits better with a book about Margaret and Henry.)