For Week 2 of Nonfiction November the theme is – Fiction / Nonfiction Book Pairing: The prompt for this week’s Nonfiction November post comes from Sarah’s Book Shelves: 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’ll go with two titles that I think would pair up well. The first is Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal. Maggie Hope has graduated at the top of her class but in 1940 the only job she can find is as a typist but once intelligence officers start working with her they realize she has a keen mind and can be instrumental in codebreaking and help defeat the Germans. I really enjoyed this book and mentioning it now reminds me that I need to follow up on this series.

To pair that up I thought you couldn’t go wrong with Code Girls by Liza Mundy. Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. I’ve only just begun this book but can already imagine what a great learning experience this will be.

Here’s a short excerpt from Code Girls:

“At the time these schools were founded, many considered higher education to be poorly suited for girls. Now the views had changed. Educated women were wanted. Urgently.”

Would love to see, what books you are pairing for this week’s nonfiction theme.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We celebrated our our wedding anniversary, tried a new pizza place and of course spent some time with books. Overall a great time. I can’t believe we are into November and I just know these last two months of the year will fly by so my goal this month is to get a lot of stuff done around the house so that when Thanksgiving weekend comes along, I can devote some time to being outdoors, being with books and relaxing!

On the book front, when we went to Barnes & Noble I found a lot of new magazines to explore and I did find the last issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. A few weeks ago I read that they had gone to a quarterly publication, then that it was completely shutting down and now looks like there may be hope that it’s going to be acquired. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will still stay around. In any case, I was so excited to get this issue because there are some cool techniques and one in particular with gelli plate printing.

In other book news, I bought Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith. I’m not really that keen to start this book but it’s for my book group discussion later this month. I’d rather start some nonfiction, an Atwood or maybe even some German Literature. Can you believe I almost forgot about German Lit Month? Caroline & Lizzy have some great themes to talk about each week so go check it out. I’m still debating whether to join or not so I’ll let you know.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Hope you all have a great start of the week and more book talk soon!