Best Paired With: If you like this Fiction book, Try this Nonfiction One
by Haley Graham
If you’re not typically a nonfiction reader on a usual day, try reading a companion nonfiction book with a literary fiction favorite! These book besties cover similar material and could be read in tandem or one after the other for a reading experience that dreams are made of.
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1. Limitarianism and Long Island Compromise
What’s a better way to grow a distaste for the ultra-wealthy than to read two books about how harmful wealth and emotional repression are? Long Island Compromise follows three siblings growing up in the shadow of prestige, money, and buckets of trauma that no one acknowledges. Ingrid Robeyn’s book Limitarianism covers numerous reasons why ethical billionaires don’t exist and why extreme wealth is immoral, including the way that the ultra-rich are harmed by their own wealth.
2. Annie Bot and Men Who Hate Women
Annie Bot is a dystopian literary fiction following Annie, Doug’s newest AI girlfriend designed to meet his every need. This incel nightmare paired with the horrifying reality of internalized misogyny found in Men Who Hate Women make a dynamic pair for quite an afternoon of raging!
3. The End of Policing and Nightcrawling
Reading The End of Policing right before Nightcrawling entirely changed my experience of both books for the better. I was able to see real world examples of how these poor policing policies impact real people and consider how changes would affect actual communities.
4. Our Wives Under the Sea and In the Dream House
Sapphic romance meets its own devolving. In The Dream House is a unique memoir following the upending of an emotionally abusive relationship, while Our Wives Under the Sea is an atmospheric, slow story of two women facing the reality of a relationship changed by circumstances outside of their control. Both of these explore control and repression in a relationship in totally different ways.
5. Perfume and Pain and Trick Mirror
In all the ways that we delude ourselves, both Anna Dorn and Jia Tolentino are prepared to call us – and themselves – out. If you enjoyed Perfume and Pain for the narrator’s ability to make you love and hate her in the same breath, Jia Tolentino is the sage essayist you are looking for to drive the point home when it comes to the subjectivity of our perceptions.
Personally, I have been loving reading in tandem lately. Having a nonfiction and fiction pick at the same time has me feeling like a college professor by the end. Blending fiction and nonfiction with overlapping themes has totally changed my reading experience for so many of these!