The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale is one of those books you get sucked into and live in till you turn the last page. And a day or two beyond.

Mostly set in Europe during World War II, The Nightingale covers the life of a small family and how they individually dealt with the horrors of the war. This book has romance, adventure, suspense, and above all is highly engaging and readable.

To keep things interesting, there are a few chapters set in modern day where you aren't sure who is narrating. And that's a good thing. It keeps you guessing till the very end.

The Nightingale

Book Read:  The Nightingale
Author:  Kristin Hannah

Lisette's List by Susan Vreeland

I read Lisette's List by Susan Vreeland and savored this novel about art, World War II, and love. If you've read any of Vreeland's other novels, you know she gets into the art world like none other. And her writing is beautiful, to boot!

Lisette's List: A Novel

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I woke up this morning with only about 30 pages left to read in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr so I made a pot of coffee and took a cup back to bed and finished this wonderful novel.

This novel is set in Europe during World War II and alternates mostly between two characters:  Werner Pfennig, an orphaned German boy in his teens who's a wizard at radios and electronics and Marie-Laure, a blind French girl of about the same age who lives with her father in Paris then in Saint-Malo with her great uncle.

The story is so rich and detailed and lovely even though it's basically about a horrible time in history. Please read it. You're in for a treat.

Book Read:  All the Light We Cannot See

Author:  Anthony Doerr

The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay

I loved this book! The Secret Lives of Codebreakers:  The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay is full of details about the daily lives of the British men and women who worked hard at code breaking but could tell no one. Ever.

Like spies in wartime, these regular people were recruited for special skills they had, like mathematics or language or puzzle and problem solving. They couldn't tell their families or friends what they were doing and mostly were told to say they worked for the government as secretaries or clerks of some kind. 

They helped win World War II by cracking codes that helped the Allies learn where the enemy would be in advance, for example. After the war, these same people couldn't include any of their experience or skills obtained at Bletchley Park on their resumes or job applications so many went back to mundane jobs or changed fields entirely.

If you know a history buff, The Secret Lives of Codebreakers would be a fabulous Christmas present!


I also watched The Bletchley Circle about four women who cracked Nazi codes during World War II and used these skills to track a killer years later. Fascinating stuff!

Book Read:  The Secret Lives of Codebreakers:  The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park
Author:  Sinclair McKay

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Can Jodi Picoult write a bad book? No, I don't think she can. I finished reading The Storyteller and once again was amazed at her storytelling prowess.

This novel is a departure from her "normal" books. It's set partly in present day where Sage Singer is a baker who works nights and is carrying on an affair with a married man (a funeral director) and in the 1930s and 1940s before and during World War II. Minka, Sage's grandmother, is a young Jewish teenager living with her family in Poland when the Nazis take over. 

Minka writes stories, and a few pages of the main story she is writing are interspersed after each chapter of the book--present day or during the war. Then during the part of the book where Minka is living through World War II, the story becomes part of the bigger story. 

This book is amazing. It was really hard to read in places, and a few nights I had strange dreams after going to sleep right after reading it. So, I read the rest of the hard-to-read parts (the concentration camp narrative) during the day. I'd recommend you do the same, but maybe it won't bother you like it did me.

In any case, don't let that stop you from reading The Storyteller. It is one of the best stories of World War II I've read.

Book Read:  The Storyteller
Author:  Jodi Picoult

All That I Am by Anna Funder

Wow, I am so glad I finished this book. In the beginning, it sorted of was slow and I wasn't sure if I wanted to invest the time reading it. Ends up, it was really a good story. I think one thing that confused me at first was the flip flopping between "now" and "then."

All That I Am is based on some true events of Jewish refuges from Germany who went to England before World War II. This group worked to raise awareness of crazy Hitler's doings with some surprising twists. The writing is excellent and the story as well.

One line that really was lovely:   "a vessel of memories in a world of forgetting" and toward the end of the book when Ruth, one of the narrators is having lucid dreams:  "Sometimes I would give Dora another life, one with a different ending. The human brain cannot encompass total absence. Like infinity, it is simply not something that the organ runs to. The space someone leaves must be filled, so we dream forever of those who are no longer here. Our minds make them live again. They try, God bless them, to account fro the gap which the brain itself cannot fathom."

Book Read: All That I Am

Author: Anna Funder

ISBN: 978-0-06-207756-1

Nancy Wake: SOE's Greatest Heroine by Russell Braddon

 
I finished another female spy book the other night but hadn't had a chance to list it here till now. Nancy Wake was a 20-something woman during World War II. She was originally from New Zealand who had immigrated to England. When World War II broke out, she was living in Marseille, France, married to a Frenchman. 


She started her spy efforts by aiding the French Resistance by giving them money and food since her husband was wealthy. She gradually took on more duties like being a courier delivering messages by train to other French cities. For her own safety in 1943, she went to England but signed up with the SOE and returned to France to work undercover.

Buy the end of the war she was a full-fledged spy, arranging parachute drops of supplies, weapons, and people, as well as whatever else needed to be done to defeat the Bosch/the gerries/the Germans.

This book was written relatively soon after the war, in 1956. I found the writing to be almost comical in places, but it was partially just the style of the time, I think. Fascinating woman though she could be irritating as hell at times, almost playing dumb, but she was obviously intelligent and probably used her feminine wiles to her advantage to get what she wanted.


I read online that the first two seasons of Wish Me Luck were based on some of her experiences. I wrote a Squidoo article on Women Spies in World War II, if you want to read about more of these brave women.
 

Book Read: Nancy Wake:  SOE's Greatest Heroine

Author:  Russell Braddon

ISBN:  978-07524-5485-6

The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy by Judith L. Pearson

I got on a female spy kick when I innocently checked out the BBC series Wish Me Luck about a month ago. I almost took the three sets of DVDs back to the library but stuck one in one day and was instantly hooked.

Wish Me Luck was a fictional account of British women spies who helped the French Resistance during World War II. Much of the information was accurate (the training they went through and the undercover nature of this dangerous job including changing their names, learning the French habits and changing everything about themselves including French dental work, feminine products, cigarettes, and clothes to name just a few). It was fascinating.

Then I watched Charlotte Gray again and another spy movie. Then I read The Wolves at the Door. Virginia Hall was an American who was declined by the U.S. to do secret work in Europe during the war because of her handicap. She'd lost part of her leg below the knee in a shooting accident. She worn a wooden prosthetic she named Cuthbert.

She was a brave, fascinating women who spent four years working undercover in France for Great Britain's SOE and finally for America's OSS. If you love a good read, that's also a true story, you'll love this one!

I did find several typos near the end of this book. Ridiculous! I guess the proofreader was tired. 

Do you have any female spy novels or nonfiction books to recommend?

Book Read: The Wolves at the Door:  The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy

Author:  Judith L. Pearson

ISBN:  1-59228-762-X

Small Island by Andrea Levy

I finished reading Small Island last night, late. Then when I woke up this morning, I fiddled around on the computer a little then watched the PBS Masterpiece Classic show Small Island. I love being able to do that!

The book was exceptional, telling the tale of four young people during and after World War II. Hortense and Gilbert Joseph are from Jamaica and come to England after the war to begin new, better lives. Gilbert met Queenie during the war and since her husband, Bernard does not return home after serving in the RAF during the war, she lets rooms. Gilbert and Hortense rent a room and since I don't want to giveaway more of the story, I'll stop with the storyline.

Small Island won the British Orange Prize in 2004, and rightfully so. This novel is well written and tells a story, though fiction, of a snippet of four main characters' lives during the war, bringing that period to life. Oh, the Masterpiece Classic show was very good too. It followed the book closely but they added a small ending that wasn't in the book reflecting what present day was like thanks to the main characters.

Book Read: Small Island

Author:  Andrea Levy

ISBN:  0-312-42467-1

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

I'm not sure where I picked up Winter Garden, but I had it in my "someday" pile. "Someday I'll read that book." I wasn't as thrilled at the beginning of this book as I was at the end. The story within a story, the fairy tale told by the mother to her two daughters, made the book. I don't like to give away even the smallest part of books so as not to spoil it for readers, but this ended up being such a good book. I'm glad I stuck with it.

The brutal life of Russians during the siege of Leningrad during World War II was told from a first person account that was heartfelt and horrible. But I'm sure the real thing was many times worse than reading about this first person account. It reminds me of City of Thieves by David Benioff, which covered this same topic from a couple of young men's point of view. I'd recommend both Winter Garden and City of Thieves for anyone who is a student of this era.

Do you like reading fiction based on real life?

Book Read: Winter Garden

Author:  Kristin Hannah

ISBN:  978-0-312-36412-0

City of Thieves by David Benioff

Oh boy. I just finished reading City of Thieves by David Benioff, and what a good book it is! This book is fiction but reads like the true story of a pair of Russians in Lenigrad/Piter and beyond just trying to survive during World War II. I don't like to read and tell so won't divulge the ending. I mean, it's one reason I don't read book reviews. I don't want or like any influence before I read a book or watch a movie.

This book starts during modern day with a grandson (a grown man, 34, not 40 as his grandfather accuses him of being) asking his grandfather about the war. It's only a few pages, a few beautifully written pages, that begins this story, but these few pages are key. Reread them when you've finished the book. They take on a whole other meaning.

David Benioff has written two other books. I have to read them.

Book Read: City of Thieves

Author:  David Benioff

ISBN:  978-0-670-01870-3

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

  

I finished reading Sarah's Key last night and loved it. Sarah's Key has been made into a movie (starring Kristin Scott Thomas, to be released in November of this year). I think that's where I heard of it. I can just imagine that this story will make a great movie.

A young Jewish girl in France and her family are carted off by the French police on the orders of the Nazis in July 1942. Almost all of the family, that is. That's the clincher. Egad. This story is fiction but based on fact (Jews in France were shipped to Auschwitz, for example), but even with it being fiction, it was told well. The story is original and oh so heartbreaking.

My only gripe was the translation. Since the author is French, I'm assuming that she wrote this book in French. The translation to English was awkward in places and plain strange. Sentences were sometimes repeated almost word for word within a few paragraphs, which makes me wonder what the original writing said.

But, overall I'd recommend this book all day long. And I will definitely watch this movie when it comes out. Let me know if you've read Sarah's Key and what you thought.

Book Read: Sarah's Key

Author:Tatiana de Rosnay

ISBN: 0-312-37084-9

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

 
   
Have you read this book? I finished reading Unbroken:  A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption last night. This is such a good book and think anyone would enjoy it. Maybe enjoy isn't the right word because most of the book is pretty hard to read.  

Unbroken is the story of Louis Zampernini, a U.S. Army Air Forces officer, who is shot down over the Pacific. The story of his days in a life raft floating for weeks then taken prisoner of war is so unbelievable that it has to be true. You can't make this stuff up. 

Book Read: Unbroken

Author: Laura Hillenbrand

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6416-8