Stranger than Fiction

  Alan Rickman was one of my favorite actors. He was such a convincing character, no matter which kind he played, and – oh! – that voice! When he died in January 2016, I felt such a loss; all the plays and films he would never be in. But in 2022, when Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries (edited by Alan Taylor) was published, I was looking forward to knowing more about his life and thoughts. However, with 480 pages, which include a section of photographs, illustrations from his diaries, index, appendix and preface, there isn’t much detail about his life. This book is my choice for the category Memoir/Biography of the 2025 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. The diary entries are from 1993, when he started writing regularly, to 2015, which was shortly before his death. There is an Appendix of the occasional diary entries he made earlier. This is described as, “Alan Rickman kept occasional diaries from around 1993 to 1982 and the again, more fulsomely and regularly from 1993 to the ...

A new year and a new challenge! Again, I’m joining the Nonfiction Reader Challenge hosted by Shellyrae at her blog, book’dout . The stated goal of the challenge is to encourage participants to read nonfiction during the year. Each year, there are 12 topic categories, and those who accept the challenge choose a goal to complete by 31 December. This year’s goals are: Nonfiction Nipper : Read & review 3 books, from any 3 listed categories Nonfiction Nibbler : Read & review 6 books, from any 6 listed categories Nonfiction Nosher : Read & review 12 books, one for each category Nonfiction Grazer : Read & review any nonfiction book. Set your own goal, or none at all, just share the nonfiction you read through the year. I aim to become a Nonfiction Nosher, because I already have books on my TBR pile for 10 of the categories (and multiple books for some of the categories). So I’m ready to start noshing. The categories this year are: History Memoir/Biography True ...

  This year, for the 4th time, I took on the Nonfiction Reader Challenge, hosted by Shelleyrae at Book’d Out ( https://bookdout.wordpress.com/ ). I’ve finished the Challenge as a “Nonfiction Nibbler,” for which I had to “read and review any 6 books, from any 6 listed categories”. I also read a book in a 7 th category, and nonfiction books that didn’t fit into a category, or were in a category I had already reviewed (a lot of history and science). In addition to the 13 nonfiction books, I read a number of fiction books, but I don’t include fiction on this blog. My Challenge wrap-up is: History: Lady Sapiens Science: The Smart Neanderthal Health: Vagina Obscura Culture: Image on the Edge True Crime: The Trial of Lizzie Borden Food: Ancestral Appetites Published in 2024: The Brothers Grimm It’s difficult to say which book I liked best – they were all good choices for me. Perhaps The Smart Neanderthal stands out because it was my favorite book about Neanderthals out of the ...

  Grimm’s (or Grimms’) Fairy Tales are well-known all over the world, but I wonder if most people know that the name refers to the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. When I was a child I had assumed that the Grimms wrote the tales, but later learned that they collected the tales over a number of years in German-speaking regions of Europe. During my linguistics studies at university, I also learned that it was Jakob Grimm who developed ‘Grimm’s Law,’ which describes regular correspondences between certain sounds of proto-Indo-European to early Germanic and languages that developed from German (like English). It seems that his linguistics theories were inspired by the translations that were done for the tales he and his brother collected. But I did not know much about their personal lives or why they started collecting the folk tales and legends they became known for. So when I learned about The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, by Ann Schmiesing, I was very interested to find out more. ...

  Homo neanderthalensis , or Neanderthals, were a species of hominin that existed from approximately 400,000 to 40,000 BCE, coexisting with Homo sapiens for up to 10,000 years. From the time of the discovery of their existence in 1856, they were assumed to be brutish, ignorant and animal-like. The stereotypical caveman. But new discoveries and evidence during the last decade have given us a different picture of what Neanderthals were like and what they were capable of.* These assumptions were that they were not so different from us. They were intelligent, excellent hunters and stone carvers, they created art and buried their dead, and they lived in small family groups, caring for each other. Now Ludovic Slimak, in The Naked Neanderthal , 2022 (English translation 2023), questions this more recent image. His perspective is that Neanderthals were not like us, but rather a completely different type of humanity, and that we cannot know what they were really like. He states that the...

Being interested in both prehistory and in food history, I was attracted by the title of this book –   Ancestral Appetites: Food in Prehistory by Kristen J. Gremillion, 2011. This is also my choice for the category Food , in the 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . Gremillion is a Professor of Anthropology at The Ohio State University who specializes in paleoethnobotany. In the Introduction , Gremillion states, “Like most mammals, and especially as primates, we have a versatile behavioral repertoire; when it comes to inventing ways to catch, harvest, prepare, and consume food, we have no rivals.” And explains that in this book, “I explore how this complex system of dietary adaptation developed to generate the diversity of human foodways present today.” She doesn’t focus on specific cuisines or “recipes,” but rather the development of hunting, gathering, farming, husbandry as well as techniques of cooking, preparation, fermenting, etc. Although Gremillion doesn’t focus on specifi...

  At the beginning of the first chapter of  How to Think Like a Neandertal , the authors Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge (2012) explain their spelling choice of ‘Neandertal’ (instead of ‘Neanderthal’), so I use that spelling in this review. [Both spellings are correct and are pronounced the same.] But aside from the spelling choice, I do not like the title of the book. First, it sounds like the book will be about how to emulate the thinking process of Neandertals (similar to the books, How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci, Like Sherlock Holmes , Like a Roman Emperor, Like a Computer Scientist, etc . ). And this book is nothing like that. Second, the title doesn’t fit the valid, academic focus of the book. Instead, this book concentrates on building a picture of the mental life of Neandertals, drawing on evidence from archaeology and psychology. The authors are professors at the University of Colorado. Wynn teaches Anthropology and Coolidge is a professor of Psychology....

Lizzie Borden was a woman accused of murdering her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts. The circumstances were unprecedented for the time, and the trial, becoming known as the “Trial of the Century,” spawned a media frenzy that was a national sensation. I think the name ‘Lizzie Borden’ is still familiar to Americans today, and perhaps to those  in other parts of the world as well  who are interested in unsolved crimes. The Trial of Lizzie Borden , 2019, by Cara Robertson, is my choice for the topic True Crime for the 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . The two victims, Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby, were hacked to death with an axe or hatchet, causing multiple blows to their skull and neck. In total, there were 29 wounds. Andrew’s face was unrecognizable, being described by a police officer as “a mass of raw meat.” It was determined that Abby was killed first, and Andrew about an hour later. That made it unlikely that the murderer ...

  Between the Wind and the Water: World Heritage Orkney , by Caroline Wickham-Jones, 2015, describes the Neolithic sites in Orkney that were given World Heritage status. Wickham-Jones explains that “the World Heritage Convention seeks to safeguard the well-being of exceptional sites of cultural and natural value.” In Orkney these sites are all located on the Brodgar peninsula: the settlement Skara Brae; the stone circles Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness; the stone settings called Watch Stone and Barnhouse Stone; and the chambered tomb of Maeshowe. She describes each of these sites in terms of their history, purpose, setting, excavation and significance. The book includes photographs of the sites and their excavations. In addition, she describes the area and inhabitants in the Mesolithic era that preceded the construction of these sites, as well as the following Bronze and Iron Ages, which saw the arrival of the Picts, the Norse and the Romans. In each of these sections,...

  In Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art ,   Michael Camille, former professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, describes and analyzes the artwork on the borders of Medieval manuscripts, stained glass windows, architecture and court decorations. His examples include both realistic and fantastic creatures, and many are incredibly pornographic images, which seem even more bizarre since they are framing themes from the Bible and religious ceremonies. I knew nothing about the subject, but I read this book for a week-long Art History course I’m going to take. This is also my choice for the Culture category of the 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . Each chapter focuses on Art in the Margins of: Chapter 1: Illuminated Manuscripts Chapter 2: Monasteries Chapter 3: Cathedrals Chapter 4: The Court Chapter 5: The City And Chapter 6 is “The End of the Edge,” detailing “the beginning of the demise of the tradition of Gothic marginal representation.” ...

  Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the coming of the Romans by Francis Pryor, 2021, focuses on the prehistory of Great Britain and Ireland through 15 archaeological excavations (in separate sections chronologically from 900,000 years ago to AD 410). Each excavation reveals information about the people, lifestyle and landscape of the corresponding time period. For example, the first four sections are: Scene 1: Britain During the Ages of Ice (900,000-500,000 years ago): Happisburgh – Pakefield – Boxgrove Scene 2: The Persistence of Caves: Life, Death and the Ancestors (30,000 years ago-600 BC): Goat’s Hole Cave, Paviland – Killuragh and Sramore Caves – Robber’s Den Cave Scene 3: Inhabiting the Post-Glacial Landscape: Living on the Plains (9000 BC): The Vale of Pickering – Glacial Lake Flixton Scene 4: From Wood to Stone on Salisbury Plain (8000-3000 BC): The Stonehenge Car Park – The Avenue – Blick Mead Spring – Stonehenge Francis Pryor is an archaeologi...

Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric site in Britain, but there are still many questions about its origins. Who were the people who built it, why was that particular site chosen, and what was its purpose? The Neolithic site of Durrington Walls has been identified as the place where the community lived who conducted the main stage of construction at Stonehenge, but what existed in that area beforehand? The fairly new discovery of Blick Mead, a Mesolithic site only 2 kilometers from Stonehenge (near today’s Amesbury), is helping to provide some answers. The excavations at Blick Mead started in 2005 and have so far revealed evidence of continuous human habitation from 8,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE (the oldest inhabited Mesolithic site in Britain), and that it was the center of a network of paths from throughout southern Britain. This indicates that the area was significant to the prehistoric inhabitants before Stonehenge was built, and was possibly why the site was chosen. The book Blic...