Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years

Title: Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years

Author: Julie Andrews Edwards, Emma Walton Hamilton

Genre: Autobiography

Summary: (From Goodreads) NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria.

In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage.
With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films--Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations.

Co-written with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring. 

Rating: Really liked it!

Why I Like It: Enjoyed hearing Julie Andrews voice reading this book! Very interesting! Great continuation of her first book.

Other: Audio
Reviewer: Patsy

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Title: Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Author: Julie Andres Edwards

Genre: autobiography

Summary: (From Good Reads)Since her first appearance on screen in Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews has played a series of memorable roles that have endeared her to generations. But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now.

In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.

Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents' painful divorce; her mother's turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie's professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom.

Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter, Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond.

Julie Andrews' career has flourished over seven decades. From her legendary Broadway performances, to her roles in such iconic films as The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, 10, and The Princess Diaries, to her award-winning television appearances, multiple album releases, concert tours, international humanitarian work, best-selling children's books, and championship of literacy, Julie's influence spans generations. Today, she lives with her husband of thirty-eight years, the acclaimed writer/director Blake Edwards; they have five children and seven grandchildren.

Rating:Very good!

Why I Like It: Loved Julie Andrews reading her book! So talented! She has had a very interesting life & lived in wonderful places! Very engaging book!

Other: Audio, also got printed copy from the library so could see the pictures she included in her book

Reviewer: Patsy

A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home

Title: A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home

Author: Steve Pemberton
Genre: Audiobiography

Summary: (from Goodreads) From the day he is five-years-old and dropped off at his foster home of the next eleven years, Stephen is mentally and physically tortured. No one in the system can help him. No one can tell him if he has a family. No one can tell him why, with obvious African-American features, he has the last name of Klakowicz.

Along the way, a single faint light comes only from a neighbor’s small acts of kindness and caring—and a box of books. From one of those books he learns that he has to fight in any way he can—for victory is in the battle. His victory is to excel in school.

Against all odds, the author succeeded. He attended college, graduated, became a successful corporate executive, and married a wonderful woman with whom he established a loving family of his own. Through it, he dug voraciously through records and files and found his history, his birth family—and the ultimate disappointment as some family members embrace him, but others reject him.

Rating: Excellent!

Why I Like It: The author of this Book, Steve Pemberton, is the orphan & subject of this book. He does such a terrific job of narrating it on audio! Many of of the reviews indicated on how hard it was to read this book. I found that listening to it, with the author speaking, most likely made it easier & more meaningful. Terrific book & very inspiring!

Other: audio
Reviewer: Patsy

Becoming

Title: Becoming

Author: Michelle Obama

Genre:   autobiography                  

Summary:  Michelle Obama tells her story from growing up on the South Side of Chicago, through college, various careers, meeting Barak Obama, and her experience as First Lady. 

Rating: Very good

Why I Like It:  Very interesting to see things from her point of view.  Not dry at all.  She is very introspective and interested in the world around her and in other people.  Very little politics. 

Reviewer: Kathy 

Craig & Fred

Title: Craig & Fred
Author: Craig Grossi
Genre: autobiography
Summary: (Goodreads) The uplifting and unforgettable true story of a US Marine, the stray dog he met on an Afghan battlefield, and how they saved each other and now travel America together, "spreading the message of stubborn positivity."

In 2010, Sergeant Craig Grossi was doing intelligence work for Marine RECON—the most elite fighters in the Corps—in a remote part of Afghanistan. While on patrol, he spotted a young dog "with a big goofy head and little legs" who didn’t seem vicious or run in a pack like most strays they’d encountered. After eating a piece of beef jerky Craig offered—against military regulations—the dog began to follow him. "Looks like you made a friend," another Marine yelled. Grossi heard, "Looks like a 'Fred.'" The name stuck, and a beautiful, life-changing friendship was forged.

Fred not only stole Craig’s heart; he won over the RECON fighters, who helped Craig smuggle the dog into heavily fortified Camp Leatherneck in a duffel bag—risking jail and Fred’s life. With the help of a crew of DHL workers, a sympathetic vet, and a military dog handler, Fred eventually made it to Craig’s family in Virginia.

Months later, when Craig returned to the U.S., it was Fred’s turn to save the wounded Marine from Post-Traumatic Stress. Today, Craig and Fred are touching lives nationwide, from a swampy campground in a Louisiana State Park to the streets of Portland, Oregon, and everywhere in between.

A poignant and inspiring tale of hope, resilience, and optimism, with a timeless message at its heart—"it is not what happens to us that matters, but how we respond to it"—Craig & Fred is a shining example of the power of love to transform our hearts and our lives.

Rating: Excellent!

Why I Like It: Audio, read by the author who did a fantastic job! Well written, interesting and easy to follow. Many good lessons in it!

Other: Avery recommended this book on Goodreads. Thank you Avery!

Reviewer: Patsy

My Life on the Road

Title:  My Life on the Road
 
Author:  Gloria Steinem

Genre: Autobiography

Summary:  From book inside cover:   "Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood.  When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living.  The seeds were planted.  Gloria realized that growing up didn't have to mean settling down.  And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution.

Rating: Very good.

Why I Like It:  Very interesting.  I knew about her and remember her being ridiculed in the earlier years, but didn't realize how much she had done for women's rights and equality.  
 
Reviewer: Kathy

Even This I Get To Experience

Title:  Even This I Get To Experience
Author:  Norman Lear
Genre: autobiography
Summary:  Norman Lear is the renowned creator of such iconic TV programs as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hardman.  He remade our television culture from the ground up.  He was a writer, director and/or  producer in many TV shows and movies.  He had a very difficult childhood and was an airman in WWII.

Rating: very good
Why I Like It:  Interesting behind the scenes look at a big change in our popular culture.  I remember when All in the Family first broadcast and all the controversy.

Reviewer: Kathy