A LONG WAY HOME

Title: A LONG WAY HOME  

Author: Saroo Brierley  

Genre: nonfiction 

 Summary: As a five-year-old in India, the author got lost on a train. Twenty-five years later, from Australia, he found his way back. This is what happened in between. 

Rating: Very good  

Why I Like It: Amazing story. Also get a look at a whole different culture and way of life.  

Reviewer: Kathy

Belgravia

Title: Belgravia
Author: Julian Fellowes
Genre: historical fiction
 

Summary: Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode.
Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is peopled by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
 

Rating: Wonderful

Why I Like It: I really liked this book! It's from the author of Downton Abbey tv show. Now, I haven't read Downton Abbey and only watched one season of it, so I didn't have that much influence into this wonderful story, but I can see how they are similar (families vs their servants of great houses). What I enjoyed about this book is that we the reader knew the entire story and got to watch it unfold with the characters AND it has a pleasant ending, which I didn't necessarily think would happen as I was listening.
 

Other: audio
Reviewer: Avery

Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War

Title: Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War
Author: Pamela D. Toler PhD
Genre: Historical Non-fiction
Summary: Summary from Amazon:
HEROINES OF MERCY STREET tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, mansion turned war-time hospital and setting for the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War, were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded.
These women saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before, and medicine was at a turning point. HEROINES OF MERCY STREET follows the lives of women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, Anne Reading, and more before, during, and after their epic struggle in Alexandria and reveals their personal contributions to this astounding period in the advancement of medicine.
Rating: Excellent
Why I Like It: I first saw the series1 & 2 on PBS. This book added so much more information about what it was really like during the war. The series is very good but it couldn’t include all of the details that this book covered.
Other: audio – easy to listen to
Reviewer: Patsy

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW

Title: A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW
Author: Amor Towles
Genre: Fiction/Historical fiction
Summary: In 1922, 30-year-old Count Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
Rating: Very good
Why I Like It: The book is very different and contains many interesting characters and some surprises. Also, the backdrop of Russian history was interesting. It took awhile to really get into the book, but well worth it.
Other:
Reviewer: Kathy

HIDDEN FIGURES

Title: HIDDEN FIGURES
Author: Margot Shetterly
Genre: Nonfiction
Summary: “True story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space.”
Rating: Very good
Why I Like It: The books actually begins in the 40's with the government's research and development of air planes for WWII. There was a great need for mathematicians and many black women were hired. A lot of background on segregation and the treatment of blacks. This tells the personal stories of some of the women. Very interesting and easy to read.
Other:
Reviewer: Kathy

Bud, Not Buddy

Title: Bud, Not Buddy
Author: Christopher Paul Curtis

Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical drama

Summary: Amazon.com Review

"It's funny how ideas are, in a lot of ways they're just like seeds. Both of them start real, real small and then... woop, zoop, sloop... before you can say Jack Robinson, they've gone and grown a lot bigger than you ever thought they could." So figures scrappy 10-year-old philosopher Bud--"not Buddy"--Caldwell, an orphan on the run from abusive foster homes and Hoovervilles in 1930s Michigan. And the idea that's planted itself in his head is that Herman E. Calloway, standup-bass player for the Dusky Devastators of the Depression, is his father.
Guided only by a flier for one of Calloway's shows--a small, blue poster that had mysteriously upset his mother shortly before she died--Bud sets off to track down his supposed dad, a man he's never laid eyes on. And, being 10, Bud-not-Buddy gets into all sorts of trouble along the way, barely escaping a monster-infested woodshed, stealing a vampire's car, and even getting tricked into "busting slob with a real live girl." Christopher Paul Curtis, author of The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, once again exhibits his skill for capturing the language and feel of an era and creates an authentic, touching, often hilarious voice in little Bud. (Ages 8 to 12) --Paul Hughes

Rating: Excellent
Why I Like It: Very entertaining, laugh out loud funny!

Other: What made it so entertaining was I listened to it on Audio. It was read by James Avery, who did an outstanding job!
Reviewer: Patsy

All The Light We Cannot See

Title: All The Light We Cannot See
Author:  Anthony Doerr
Genre: Historical Fiction      

Summary: Story interweaves the lives of a blind girl from Paris and a young man from Germany before and during WWII.  Although the characters are fictional, there are events in the story that actually happened in France and Germany, especially the bombing of the city of Saint-Malo. 
Rating: Very good

Why I Like It:  The story takes place during a war, but is not your usual war story. 

Reviewer: Kathy