It’s the fourth (and extra!) week of of Nonfiction November and it’s time for a new challenge to me: Stranger than Fiction.

Week 4: (November 22-26) – Stranger Than Fiction with Christopher at Plucked from the Stacks: This week we’re focusing on all the great nonfiction books that *almost* don’t seem real. A sports biography involving overcoming massive obstacles, a profile on a bizarre scam, a look into the natural wonders in our world—basically, if it makes your jaw drop, you can highlight it for this week’s topic.

I’m selecting two books I’ve read very recently (in fact the last two books I’ve reviewed) for this weekly prompt, and in fact I read one of them to the exclusion of all else (sorry, Novellas in November) to make sure I could fit it in! I hope that’s not cheating, but maybe I read very believeable books usually …

“The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes” by Zoe Playdon discusses something that should and could never have happened in English and Scottish law: the absolute silencing, super-injunction before there were super-injunctions created suppression of a court case which still managed to act as a precedent in law to protect inheritance laws and keep the hegemony of the Establishment intact, and destroyed the ability of trans people to have any kind of equal opportunity or fair treatment in law or employment. Absolutely shocking, and very well drawn in this book that deserves a wide audience.

On a lighter but still not quite believable note, what Nimsdai Purja describes in “Beyond Possible” just shouldn’t have been possible – scaling the world’s fourteen highest mountains in a matter of months rather than years, but also ending up directing traffic on Everest, dangling off a rope tied to a helicopter to rescue a fellow climber in trouble and saving lives while breaking records.

This has been a fun one to do, and I’m looking forward to reading other people’s entries for this prompt!