Tag: to read

Nonfiction November 2020: My Year in Nonfiction #NonficNov

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nonficnov1_smallNonfiction November 2020 runs from 2nd to 30th November 2020.  This year it’s hosted by Katie at DoingDewey, Rennie at What’s Nonfiction, Julz of JulzReads and Leann at Shelf Aware.

As in previous years, they’ll be posting a discussion question and link-up on the Monday of each week.  Check out this post for the full schedule and proposed prompts. You can read my response to the first week’s prompt below.

My Year in Nonfiction

Leann asks: Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

Here are the nonfiction books I’ve read since last year’s Nonfiction November, grouped roughly by subject matter. Links from the titles will take you to my reviews. I would say my favourite was The Salt Path, Raynor Winn’s account of her journey along the South West Coast Path with her husband, Moth. I have also read a number of Holocaust memoirs. They never make easy reading but are invariably incredibly inspiring.

Memoir
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn
One Hundred Miracles: A Memoir of Music and Survival by Zuzana Ruzickova & Wendy Holden
Living Among the Dead: My Grandmother’s Holocaust Survival Story of Love and Strength by Adena Bernstein Astrowsky

History
Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way by Amin Maalouf
A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys by John Buchan
Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan
The Last Secrets: The Final Mysteries of Exploration by John Buchan

Here are the nonfiction books I hope to read in November. It will be good to get them off my TBR pile and Nonfiction November gives me the perfect push to do that!  Click on the title to view the full book description on Goodreads.

In A Time of Monsters: Travels Through A Middle East in Revolt by Emma Sky – won in a Readers First giveaway, this has been on my shelf for way too long.  It promises to make ‘a complex region more comprehensible’.  I shall look forward to that.

The King’s Grace by John Buchan – his portrait of Britain during the reign of George V published in 1935 to mark the 25th anniversary of the King’s accession.

It Was Different At The Time by Inez Holden – published by Handheld Press alongside the author’s novella Night Shift (so perfect for next week’s book pairing prompt), It Was Different At The Time is Holden’s account of wartime life from April 1938 to August 1941, drawn from her own diary.

Are you taking part in Nonfiction November?

#WWWWednesday – 4th November 2020

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

A book from my Henley Literary Festival 2020 reading list (that’s not published until 2021), an ARC from Readers First and a book for a blog tour.

The Push Ashley AudrainThe Push by Ashley Audrain (ARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph)

What if your experience of motherhood was nothing like what you hoped for – but everything you always feared?

‘The women in this family, we’re different…’

The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. It was meant to be a fresh start. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn’t right. I have always known that the women in my family aren’t meant to be mothers.

My husband Fox says I’m imagining it. He tells me I’m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she’s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?

The ForgersThe Forgers by Bradford Morrow (proof copy, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

The rare book world is stunned when a reclusive collector, Adam Diehl, is found on the floor of his Montauk home: hands severed, surrounded by valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts that have been vandalized beyond repair.

Adam’s sister, Meghan, and her lover, Will – a convicted if unrepentant literary forger – struggle to come to terms with the seemingly incomprehensible murder.

But when Will begins receiving threatening handwritten letters, seemingly penned by long-dead authors, but really from someone who knows secrets about Adam’s death and Will’s past, he understands his own life is also on the line-and attempts to forge a new beginning for himself and Meg.

When I Come Home Again Graphic 2When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott (eARC, courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

How can you know who you are, when you choose to forget who you’ve been?

November 1918. On the cusp of the end of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. It quickly becomes clear that he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The soldier is given the name Adam and transferred to a rehabilitation home where his doctor, James, tries everything he can to help Adam remember who he once was. There’s just one problem. Adam doesn’t want to remember.

Unwilling to relive the trauma of war, Adam has locked his mind away, seemingly for good. But when a newspaper publishes Adam’s photograph, three women come forward, each just as certain that Adam is their relative and that he should go home with them.

But does Adam really belong with any of these women? Or is there another family waiting for him to come home?

Based on true events, When I Come Home Again is a deeply moving and powerful story of a nation’s outpouring of grief, and the search for hope in the aftermath of the First World War.

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

The Free Fishers by John Buchan

Immortal by Jessica Duchen 

When the Music Stops by Joe Heap 

Hell GateHell Gate (Ingo Finch Mystery #3) by Jeff Dawson (eARC, courtesy of Canelo via NetGalley)

To solve this case, only an outsider will do… Ingo Finch faces his biggest challenge yet.

New York, 1904 – over a thousand are dead after the sinking of the General Slocum, a pleasure steamer full of German immigrants out for a day on the East River. The community is devastated, broken, in uproar. With a populist senator preying on their grievances, a new political force is unleashed, pushing America to ally with Germany in any coming war.

Nine months later, Ingo Finch arrives in Manhattan, now an official British agent. Tasked with exposing this new movement, he is caught in a deadly game between Whitehall, Washington, Berlin… and the Mob.

Not everything in the Big Apple is as it seems. For Finch, completing the mission is one thing; surviving it quite another… (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Coral BrideThe Coral Bride (Detective Morales #2) by Roxanne Bouchard, trans. by David Warriner (review copy, courtesy of Orenda Books)

When an abandoned lobster trawler is found adrift off the coast of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, DS Joaquin Moralès begins a straightforward search for the boat’s missing captain, Angel Roberts – a rare female in a male-dominated world. But Moralès finds himself blocked at every turn – by his police colleagues, by fisheries bureaucrats, and by his grown-up son, who has turned up at his door with a host of his own personal problems.

When Angel’s body is finally discovered, it’s clear something very sinister is afoot, and Moralès and son are pulled into murky, dangerous waters, where old resentments run deep.