For the Love of Lit

Posts Tagged ‘non-fiction’

Amazon has announced what they think are the Best Books of the Year… So Far…

… But am I a total loser or something?  I have not read ANY of these and not even heard of most of them!  The only one that I’ve even heard of is the Steig Larsson book, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”  I’ve been meaning to read that trilogy, but other things/books/authors have taken precedent and I haven’t gotten around to buying them yet.

Has anyone read any of the ones on their top 10 list?  Or the Fiction or Nonfiction list?  Maybe I just have particular taste in genres and authors, but I thought I would have at least heard something about some of these.  It’s just a random list that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but still.  I like looking at these lists sometimes to get recommendations if I run out of books to download.

Still looking for some new books to get for your vacation?  Here’s Amazon’s list of summer reads.  Some of them sound really good!  Amazon Wish List, here I come!

My local paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, just published a list of fiction and non-fiction books for summer called “Summer Reading: From beach blankets to cool mountain evenings, vacation days call for a good book“.   You can click on that link and go and read the whole article and descriptions of each book, but here is a quick list of the books and links to the books on Amazon:

Fiction:

• “Spies of the Balkans” by Alan Furst
• “A Fierce Radiance” by Lauren Belfer
• “Truth” by Peter Temple
• “Seven Year Switch” by Claire Cook
• “The One That I Want” by Allison Winn Scotch (I just read this and loved it!)
• “The Outer Banks House” by Diann Ducharme
• “My Name Is Memory” by Ann Brashares
• “American Music” by Jane Mendelsohn
• “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender
• “A Visit From the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan
• “Broken” by Karen Slaughter
• “Everything” by Kevin Canty
• “The Same River Twice” by Ted Mooney
• “Kraken” by China Mieville

Non-fiction:

• “Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century” by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
• “Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America” by Jack Rakove
• “Broke, USA” by Gary Rivlin
• “The Facebook Effect” by David Kirkpatrick
• “The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn” by Nathaniel Philbrick
• “Three Chords for Beauty’s Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw” by Tom Nolan
• “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” by Jonathan Alter
• “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in A Connected Age” by Clay Shirky
• “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr

Need a last minute Father’s Day gift?  I’m sure a lot of bookworm dads out there may like some of these titles!

Are you going to go out and pick up any of these books for your summer vacation?  Or do you already have a stack of books in your beach bag ready to go?  Please feel free to share your recommendations!

In honor of Memorial Day, I wanted to write about a book that I bought about a year or so ago about a dog rescued from Iraq.  As you may know, I love animals, and I also have a personal interest in supporting the military and veterans and am involved in some projects at work around that effort.

First of all, how can you NOT love the cover??  Please forgive me because it has been awhile since I’ve read this book, so I don’t remember a lot of details.  ”From Baghdad with Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava” is about… well, exactly what the title says.  Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman is fighting the war in Iraq and one day while he’s on patrol, he hears something that he thinks may be a person coming to attack him, but it’s really a tiny little stray puppy.  The military has very strict rules forbidding soldiers from keeping pets, but Kopelman just can’t let him go back out into the streets.  Dogs over there are not like dogs here in America – they are wild animals and are not pets.  Kopelman smuggles him back to camp, and they name him Lava after the name of their battalion, the Lava Dogs.  Lava is a typically puppy – a mixture of cute and a troublemaker and that’s what makes everyone love him even more.  Kopelman knows that he is not allowed take him home once his tour of duty is over, but he can’t bear the thought of leaving him there in Iraq because he knows what happens to other dogs there.  The story explains how Kopelman has some other helpers in the quest to hide and protect the dog over in Iraq and who supported his efforts in getting Lava to the US.

The book was a very interesting read.  I loved reading the parts about Lava and his antics, but the details of military life in the middle of a war zone were also very insightful and I learned a lot from it.  The story does have a good ending, so don’t worry about that part!

Kopelman wrote a follow-up called “From Baghdad to America: Life after War for a Marine and His Rescued Dog” that deals with Kopelman’s adjustment from soldier to civilian and Lava’s transition into a real pet.  I also purchased this book but haven’t read it yet.

Happy Memorial Day and thank you to all who have served our country and given their lives for our freedom.

As you know, I like reading historical stories based on the lives of women, especially if they’re from different cultures.  This book kind of falls into that category, but it’s based on a true story.

“Booth’s Sister” is based upon the memoir of Asia Booth, the older sister of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.  It starts out right after Lincoln was killed; Asia had some visitors come to her house asking where her brother was, convinced that she knew details that could help the investigation.

The story then reverts back to Asia and John’s childhood.  To be honest, this part of the story was realllllly slow to me.  I almost put the book down (well, I didn’t have the actual book, so I guess you could say that I would have just moved onto the next book on my Kindle book list).  The story is told from the first person perspective of Asia.  As a child, she envied her brother, who was going to follow in their father’s footsteps and become an actor.  I guess back in that time, women could not be actors/actresses.  The family is really into Shakespeare, and his quotes are peppered throughout the dialogue.   From the get go, it seemed to me like Asia had more than just a jealousy or admiration of her brother, it almost seems like she is in love with him – it’s kind of odd.

Finally, after learning about Asia and John as children and teenagers, we get to their young adulthood when John becomes a pretty famous stage actor.  Asia tries to go see his plays as much as possible and is in awe of her brother just like everyone else.  When Asia gets married and invites her brother to dinner, a huge argument ensues between John and her husband (also named John) and the other guests regarding Lincoln, slavery, and the government.  That’s when you start to see the signs that he has a bone to pick with the Prez.  Next thing you know, men are beating down Asia’s door looking for John and hold her captive for about almost two weeks before they finally find and kill him.

Coincidentally, at the same time I was reading this book, my boyfriend is reading a book called “Manhunt” about the search for Lincoln’s killer (which he says I “must read”, which I will, eventually).  ”Booth’s Sister” was interesting; it wasn’t exactly what I expected.  The beginning parts about their childhood didn’t seem entirely relevant to the rest of the story of their lives (some thing did, but not all), but maybe I was just missing something.  Maybe it was because this book was BASED on the true story, so perhaps some things were “fluffed” for entertainment value.  For all of you men out there (okay, probably only a few who actually read this), this is a book that you could read – it’s not targeted specifically toward women, even though it’s told from the woman’s perspective.  You’d probably like “Manhunt” better, though.