Stranger than Fiction

  First, let me make it clear that I am a Sherlock Holmes fan, and have been one since I was 13. So when I heard about the book, The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes by Zach Dundas, it was clear that I would have to read it. The book follows the search of Dundas – also a lifelong Holmes fan – as he sets out to learn “Why have Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and the mysteries Conan Doyle challenged them to solve not only endured, but thrived?” Unfortunately, he never really answers that question, but perhaps it cannot really be answered. Instead, he learns a lot about clubs and venues devoted to Holmes, travels to places where some of the stories took place, and unearths a lot of information about the background of the author, the characters and stories as well as the history of the actors, performances, and related media that the original stories inspired. On that level, it’s an extremely detailed book – but only for fans of Sherlock Holmes, or...

As my book choice in the category of Biography for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE , I chose this book  by Hallie Rubenhold. It won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019. Rubenhold is “a social historian whose expertise lies in revealing stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history” according to the book’s jacket. What first attracted me to this book is that I have read a lot about Jack the Ripper and his crimes (being interested in true crime), but realized that I didn’t know much about his victims, other than their names. As Rubenhold points out, one of the few things everyone thinks they know about the victims is that they were prostitutes. However, Rubenhold’s research reveals that only one of the five worked as a prostitute; there is no evidence that the others were. They were all poor and often lived on the street, and were also women at a time when it was nearly impossible for a woman to survive alone. There is nothing in the book about the ...