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

One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season

Title: One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season

Author: Chris Ballard

Genre: Non-fiction, historical, sports

Summary: (From Good Reads) The Inspirational Story of a Coach, a Baseball Team, and the Season They'll Never Forget

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to represent the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair and warming up to Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ironmen would play a dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their lives forever.

In this gripping, cinematic narrative, Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard tells the story of the team and its coach, Lynn Sweet, a hippie, dreamer, and intellectual who arrived in Macon in 1966, bringing progressive ideas to a town stuck in the Eisenhower era. Beloved by students but not administration, Sweet reluctantly took over the ragtag team, intent on teaching the boys as much about life as baseball. Inspired by Sweet's unconventional methods, the undersized, undermanned Macon Ironmen embarked on an improbable postseason run that infuriated rival coaches and buoyed a town suffering from a damaging drought and the shadow of the Vietnam War--one in desperate need of something to celebrate.

In a final grace note, Ballard returns to the present day, revisiting the 1971 Ironmen to explore the effect the game had on their lives' trajectories--and the men they've become because of it. Engaging and poignant, One Shot at Forever is a testament to the power of high school sports to shape the lives of those who play them, and it reminds us that there are few bonds more sacred than that among a coach, a team, and a town. 

Rating: Excellent

Why I Like It: Wonderful, interesting, entertaining story!! Having graduated from high in 1970, it was fun to connect again with that time, especially since I grew up in a smaller, farming area, but not as small as this book is about!

Other: Audio

Reviewer: Patsy

THE POPPY WIFE

Title: THE POPPY WIFE

Author: Caroline Scott

Genre: historical fiction

Summary: From back of book: '1921. Survivors of the Great War are desperately trying to piece together the fragments of their broken lives. While many have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie's husband, Francis, has not come home. Francis is presumed to have been killed in action. But when Edie receives a mysterious photograph, she begins to think he might still be alive and embarks on a journey to find him.'

Rating: Very good

Why I Like It: Although about a difficult subject, the book is very well written and hard to put down. Very interesting as you get to know the characters and their stories come out. There is also hope for recovery and for the future. The author is a historian specializing in World War I and woman's history.

Reviewer: Kathy

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

Title: Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

Author: Ben Montgomery

Genre: biography, nonfiction, travel, nature, history

Summary: (From Goodreads) Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of “America, the Beautiful” and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.”

Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering. 

Rating: amazing

Why I Like It: Since I was born in 1952 & grew up in Ohio, I found this book was very interesting & fun! I liked the going back and forth with the history of what was going on at the time & Grandma Gatewood's Life story. Made me wonder if our Mom & Dad knew about her.

Other: audio

Reviewer: Patsy

The Kopp Sisters Series

Title: The Kopp Sisters Series

Author: Amy Stewart

Genre: historical fiction/mystery

Summary: These novels are about the three Kopp sisters and their lives in the early 1900's. The characters are based on real people involved in real events. I heard the author speak and was really impressed with her historical knowledge and the amount of research that she does for the books. She does have to change some time lines and add some fiction to make a good novel. She gets a lot of her information from newspapers from that time and the titles of the books are all newspaper headlines.

Rating: Very good

Why I Like It: Interesting and easy to read. Not a typical mystery novel. Actually, it seems more of a historical fiction then mystery.

Reviewer: Kathy 

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