The 2016 Nonfiction Reading Challenge Part I: Biographies in January

Following the success of the "Non-Fiction November" thread, and designed as a way to complement the "What are you reading" thread and generate more lively and focused discussion, 2016 will feature a series of monthly non-fiction reading challenges, each revolving around a specific theme.

Welcome to the January challenge and theme: biographies, autobiographies and memoirs! Pick a book about anyone you choose -- a historical figure, a celebrity, an infamous murderer, a sports hero -- and tell us about it. Be creative and broaden the challenge: read a group biography, like The Boys in the Boat. I might read Romantic Outlaws, a dual biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneering feminist of the Enlightenment, and her daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Make it a memoir, if you like. The ONLY criteria is that it be in some way be able to be defined as a biography or autobiography or memoir, and that it be nonfiction. (So, no novels disguised as journals or memoirs of Jane Austen, etc.)

Tell us why you chose it, and what intrigues you about it -- the author, the subject, the era, something the subject did? Then come back and keep us up to date. Should we read it too? Should we add it to our TBR lists/mountains?

Some of the books people have said they may be reading include the following:















Don't worry if you don't finish it by the end of January. I imagine that the thread will stay alive as long as people are reading their biographies (perhaps well into the spring; who knows?) even if some of us move on to the February topic (which is History). Or, you can choose to roll over your book, if you've chosen a biography of a historical figure. (For instance, if you read The Witches by Stacy Schiff, that would work as a group biography (OK, creatively defined, but who cares?) and clearly also works as a history book.

In other words, don't get too stressed or anxious about the word "challenge" here. The idea is simply to give each month a theme around which people can focus their reading and the discussion, not to get people stressed out about reading on a schedule or meeting a target.

For your reference, the working list of themes for the year is as follows:

January: Biography/Memoir/Autobiography

February: History

March: Travel

April: Religion & Spirituality (Easter/Passover)

May: The Arts

June: Natural History/Environment/Health

July: Current Affairs

August: Science and Technology

September: Philosophy/History of Ideas

October: Politics/Economics & Business/Commentary

November: Essays

December: Quirky/Who Knew?

In all cases, please feel free to interpret them as broadly as you wish. For instance, if you want to read Michael Pollan's books about food, or a book about gardening, toss 'em into the natural history category, or they also will fit into science (the science of food, botany, etc...) For the religion category, you could read anything from the Bible to a book by Sam Harris or Ayaan Hirsi Ali about why religion is a bad idea, or something about comparative religion (or, if you're still reading a biography, perhaps a biography of a religious figure...) For September's category, I'm thinking of anything from "real" philosophy (anyone up for some Kant?) to commentaries on philosophical thinking, or books about the impact of philosophy or ideas on the world we live in, such as fascism or communism. Even Maus might work here. Be as creative as you like; find something that intrigues you and bring it to the attention of the rest of us. Essays? Well, every November the annual anthology of the Best American Essays is released... and there are lots of other essays out there, in anthologies or periodicals. Tell us what you're reading, and what it's about; who the author is and what drew your attention to the piece: was it the writer or the topic? From Montaigne to Joan Didion; Francis Bacon to Ta-Nehisi Coates, the world is awash in great essayists. Current affairs is fairly self-explanatory: a book-length work that has some connection to a topic that is making the headlines. So, I might read The French Intifada, in light of the bomb attacks in Paris recently. "Quirky" is kind of a catch all category, or a place to put books like Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, about the folks who are obsessive Scrabble fans, or Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz, about Civil War re-enactors.

Feel free to post other ideas and suggestions, but in the meantime, I can't wait to hear what biographies and memoirs people look forward to reading next month!

I've justed requested Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing from the library. It's a two-for-one for me since it also qualifies for the BAC.

I don't think I will finish my November ER book before the end of the year so it will be a January read: The Upstairs Wife by Rafia Zakaria. I would also like to listen to The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age if it's available in OverDrive when I'm ready to listen.

>2 amanda4242: I read that when it first appeared, and it was great; I empathized tremendously, though I did feel she sometimes put herself through some unnecessary pain, trying to identify her top 100 books...

>3 cbl_tn: Those sound interesting!!

Am not sure what I might read. I seem to be awash in biographies, or potential candidates. Tom Holland's new book about the Caesars is one possibility, as is Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon. I've got an ARC of a new biography of Frederic the Great by Tim Blanning, and also an e-galley of a book about Benjamin Franklin in London. There is also Clare Harman's new biography of Charlotte Bronte. Then, too, I have Dietrich & Riefenstahl, about two big figures of 1930s German cinema, and The Woman Who Would Be King, about Hatshepsut. So I'm spoiled for choice, really...

I'm excited to have this nudge to commit to Mary Kingsley's HUGE Travels in West Africa. Interpreting categories broadly, I can read it as a biography in January, history in February, and travel in March. Surely by then I will be finished with it!

Thank you Suz for setting up this challenge - I will do my best to keep up with it every month.

I bought a biography of Clement Attlee yesterday in Leeds Clem Attlee by Francis Beckett and that will probably be my reading on the aeroplane back to Kuala Lumpur on January 5th.

I'm still in the choosing stages, but have pulled Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter by Kazik off the shelf, so will probably start with it. Kazik (Simha Rotam) gave testimony in Claude Lanzmann's documentary Shoah and that's what got me to track the memoir down. I also think it's important to read Holocaust nonfiction as there is a lot of Holocaust fiction and movies around and not all of it is good so one should balance it with accounts of what really happened.

I love this thread! My first book will be Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan, an autobiography. My friend bought it over the summer and passed it on to.me with a high recommendation. It's just been sitting on my bookshelf, but what a perfect time to read it!

>1 Chatterbox: Thank you for setting up this thread and the challenges! With all the political candidates heading into 2016 I'm going to TRY to learn a little bit about each, starting with The Truth About Hillary and American Dreams.

>3 cbl_tn: I'm curious to hear your thoughts on The Upstairs Wife. Keep us posted?

I'll be reading two this month:

My LTER copy of Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim.

And from my deep-in-the-core of Planet TBR, I'll be reading A Walk Toward Oregon.

As I mentioned previously I'll read My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard for the January theme. It is set 10 years after his father's death, and Karl Ove dissects and reevaluates his relationship with his father, his own experiences being a father, and his relationship to the world as a sensitive and thinking man. I have Books One, Two and Four in the series, and I intend to read one of them every quarter, as Book Five will be published sometime in 2016.

>9 dragonaria: Certainly! I've formed the habit of reviewing everything I read, but I'm obligated to review it anyway since it came through the Early Reviewers program. I hope it's as interesting as it sounds.

What a great -- and diverse -- list of reading choices!! Do drop as you start reading to chat about what you're finding good, bad and indifferent about your books. It always amazes me that biographies can vary so tremendously in terms of quality, even when I don't know much about the subject. Even by looking at the tone, or whether the author is just trying to get through the facts of someone's life or use that life to say something more about an era or a phenomena, it's remarkable how you can separate a pedestrian biography from one that is truly excellent. I still remember reading the very, very lengthy bio of Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee. It was worth every hour I spent on it, though, because I learned so much and the detail was so rich -- about Woolf, her circle, her era, the literary environment in which she worked, etc. A great biography is a tremendous accomplishment. On the flip side, there was Alison Weir's biography of Katherine Swynford, the late 14th century mistress of John of Gaunt (son of Edward III). As a commoner, there was very, very little material available on her life directly, so Weir rather cleverly turned her book into a tale of the era, of the lives of women of that time and the figures who surrounded Katherine, and out of a very few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that we have, turned it into something interesting. I'm not sure it's really a biography of Katherine, as such, although it's still described as one, but she is the central point around which all the content moves. Very clever and creative.

I've not yet made a choice, but I certainly will.

>3 cbl_tn: I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of the The Upstairs Wife as well. I also received an ER copy, and read it. I need a second perspective, though. I won't say anything about it here---you can check my review if you like.

I just started Indian Creek Chronicles, Peter Fromm's narrative of seven months working for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, living alone in a tent through the winter in the Selway-Biterroot Wilderness Area.

I've just started Andrew Hodges' biography of Alan Turing, but I'm wary because it is very long and dense. I'll see if I get into it quickly...

>16 karspeak: How are you liking it so far, Karen? That seems kind of intriguing...

>17 cushlareads: I've got "the Imitation Game" on DVD from Netflix to watch over the holidays. I think that bio might also qualify as a history tome, Cushla?? So it could make the leap over to a February book, if you wanted it to...

Good idea! My reading time shrinks at the end of January though, when school goes back, so my goal will be to blitz it in January.

>11 kidzdoc: Absolutely cannot wait to hear your reaction to that one.

>18 Chatterbox: Only a few pages in, but so far I like his writing.

I've had The Bolter in my TBR stacks for 5 years (as of 1/3/16). I think it's time for me to dust it off and get it read in January.

Thanks for setting this up >1 Chatterbox:! I am not very active in the 75 Books group. I did participate some in the AACII this year and plan to do so for the AACIII this coming year. I am already planning on doing the Dewey Decimal challenge in the 2016 Category Challenge group, and the monthly themes you have lined up match almost perfectly with theirs. So I hope to get my books to overlap and participate in both challenges as much as I can.

>23 Tara1Reads: Well, hopefully this will motivate you to become more active!! We're quite a lively bunch of folks, and mostly quite harmless, as you've probably figured out....

>22 Fourpawz2: I've not read that, so I'll look forward to your comments!

I'm not sure if I'll participate in many of the author challenges (or if I do, it will be by accident), so this will be my main focus. Otherwise, I want to read serendipitously in 2016.

>24 Chatterbox: mostly quite harmless, as you've probably figured out.... Lol. Thanks for the welcome! I don't think I will have time to maintain a thread for two groups in the coming year though, and I already have my thread made in the Category Challenge. I couldn't resist the AACIII since I have so many of those authors in my TBR. But I too would like to read serendipitously as much as possible in 2016.

>1 Chatterbox: nice idea for a challenge. One area I don't avail myself of is non-fiction/biographies. However, I have a book on my shelves that will fit the January challenge: Ruckmanism Ruckus, about one of my favorite preachers.

Well, I'm hoping to read Wild Swans, by Jung Chang in January. That should count. :)

>27 The_Hibernator: I read Wild Swans last year. I thought the first 1/4 or so was a bit odd, but I loved the last 3/4 of the book!

I just finished Neurotribes and thought it was quite good. The bulk of the book is a detailed, well-done history of autism. So, it would actually work for February's History theme, in case it's sitting on someone's TBR list...

I'm planning to read a hockey biography, probably Heart of the Blackhawks about Pierre Pilote.

Most likely, I'll read a baseball bio as well, perhaps the Kostya Kennedy bio of Pete Rose.

Just borrowed The Apprentice by Jacques Pépin

I've set up a monthly menu of challenges for myself, and I'll be trying to double up. For January, I'm reading Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, which won the Pulitzer for Biography in 1997. (Picked it up at a library sale for fifty cents earlier this year.) It'll be my read for the NFC (non-fiction challenge) as well as the PPM (Pulitzer Prize Miscellany).



ETCorrect: The book was in the basement stacks. Wha'? It's a hardcover; paid a buck for it. Neat.

>32 weird_O: - Great book, Bill, if heartbreaking in parts. I may re-visit it on audio sometime in the next year....

I think it was actually an Audible bargain sale item a day or two ago (Angela's Ashes, I mean...) Sorry not to catch that in time for people to hop on it, if there are Audible members in the crowd. I confess I don't usually notice those bargains...

>31 Tiffanynardella: I loved that book!! I picked it up at the library, a chance encounter while looking for a cookbook of some sort. His a fascinating story. Hope you enjoy it!

So I picked up a copy of The Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik. The format looks fun with lots of graphs, drawings and photos. It started out as Tumblr blog. My cousin's sixteen year old daughter recommended it to me. She dressed up as RBG for Halloween after reading this book.

>36 luvamystery65: I might read that one, too, if my reserved copy comes in from the library on time.

>37 lindapanzo: I hope you get it in on time.

I've been listening to The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris , by David McCullough, when I'm driving. It has a good deal of biography in it, and I don't expect that I will finish it before we are into January, so I will count it as part of this challenge. (It's very, very good.) Some of the individuals I'm learning about are Samuel F. B. Morse (did you know he was a painter before he was an inventor?), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Elihu Washburne, James Fenimore Cooper, Augustus Saint Gaudens, and George Healey.

I was already planning to read Queen Isabella by Alison Weir for the Reading Through Time January challenge (Women n Command), and happily it will fit nicely into this theme as well.

Quick question: I am very much looking forward to this NF challenge and have already begun to line up some books according to the monthly themes. However, I noticed at the top right side of this thread that I am not yet a member of this challenge. Yet, I have set up a 75 Books thread for 2016. I am thinking that because I did not use this particular *Non-Fiction* in my title, it isn't showing up under this challenge? I am easily confused! Maybe I will post all my NF reads here and all my other reads in my other 75 thread. Sheesh, I thought I was making things easier for myself but apparently, not...

>41 jessibud2: You have to join the 75 Books Challenge for 2016 for it to list you as a member of the group. Of course, you don't have to join the group to participate in the challenge.

>41 jessibud2: In the threadbook for the 2016 challenge, your thread is listed under username @jessebud2. I think that spelling may be the issue. Jim @drneutron should be able to fix that.
EDIT: And amanda4242 is also correct that each year, the challenge is technically a new group, and you need to join it. If it doesn't say you are a member on the top right hand side of the thread, it should have a link to "join this group".

>43 laytonwoman3rd:, >42 amanda4242: - Yikes! Can you give me a link to that one with the spelling error. I am not finding that. I thought I *had* joined the 75 books challenge for 2016. Isn't posting a new message in this group:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/75booksin2016 considered joining the challenge? Is this what is considered the *threadbook*? I don't see a spelling error there in my name. Yet it does not seem to add me as a member. I thought posting a new topic in that group was joining.

Sigh...you'd think I'd have figured this out by now

EDITED TO ADD: Ok, I think I've figured it out. I have now joined. I hope! ;-). Thanks for the guidance.

(I still don't know where the spelling error is, though)

Biographies are my all-time favorite subject for library roulette. It was tempting to just go and find something that struck my fancy for the challenge. But, no, I’ve decided to be responsible. It’s time to tackle the TBR pile!

Here’s what I have that falls into the appropriate categories:

Life Among the Piutes – Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins
Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen – Jane Aiken Hodge
Hitler’s Spy Chief: the Wilhelm Canaris Mystery – Richard Basset
Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings – Amy Kelly

I’m not sure what I’ll take a stab at first, but I’d rather like to get through all four at some point.

>45 TheAmateur: I never even knew that Jane Aiken Hodge had written a non-fiction book about Jane Austen... Oh no, temptation rears its ugly head...

The Canaris book also looks intriguing. I remember being fascinated by his shift from accommodation with the Nazi regime to resistance, like other members of the military (eg Rommel). Oh, and I remember that Canaris had dachsunds. For some reasons, that piece of trivia stuck in my mind...

Hey, folks - quick clarification: the challenge is organized each year through a Talk group. Many people join the group as a way to make reading threads in Talk easier. Your thread is the primary way you (and we!) track your reading. Some few have threads without joining the group, which is perfectly fine. In fact, some "join" the challenge by participating in thread conversations, or just group reads, or other individual features.

The spelling error was in our Threadbook - the wiki page I make to make it easier for folks to find threads. I've fixed it now. The Threadbook is here, if you want to check it out: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/2016Threadbook

Wiki is a system that allows folks to collaboratively keep information, and LT has kindly set up pages for each user and group. I make the page using cut-n-paste by hand, and it's not connected automatically to user or Talk pages. We also have a wiki to track group-level threads like group reads, etc. both can always be found in the group page header.

>47 drneutron: Thanks, Jim! So, whether or not you want to join the group, the challenge is open to one and all. It's just that your name won't show up as being a member of the group if you don't specifically join it. You don't need to do anything special at all to participate in this challenge, other than drop by and tell us all what you're up to, as frequently (or infrequently) as you care to do so, however. Being a group member is optional, although if you do join the group AND create your own thread, we can all then snoop on all the other reading you're doing, and comment on that, too.... :-)

>47 drneutron:, >48 Chatterbox: - Thanks all! I have taken notes and I think I've got it now! Your help is much appreciated

I will choose between the following ( and may read them both) from my TBR pile- I have been meaning to get to both so this is a good opportunity
Coming Ashore a memoir by Catherine Gildiner -this is actually the third book of the author's memoirs.
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

I got a head start and picked up West With the Night by Beryl Markham this week, and very glad I finally did. I'd had it on the tbr for an awfully long time, and then for somer reason I decided to read Circling the Sun by Paul McLain this year before getting to it... did not make it through more than half that book because it basically read like a bodice ripper (full review here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/193694#5232346), BUT it did make me want to pick up Markham's autobiography more than ever. It seem Ernest Hemingway was jealous of her writing abilities and I can certainly see why. It's a real joy to read—really superb and quite captivating. I may just finish it before the new year, but still wanted to log it here. Don't know how many books I'll get to in January, since I've taken it upon myself to start on War and Peace, but I've got tentative plans for one or more of these other biographies:

H is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (thanks to that nudge from Bill)
Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary

Thanks for setting this up Suzanne, I really took advantage of NF November and happy to have an added incentive to keep reaching for the NF pile this year.

>51 Smiler69: - I read West With the Night a couple of years ago and was also taken by it. As I often do after reading a book I really like, I googled the author. I don't think this is a spoiler at all but apparently there was some controversy about whether Markham actually wrote the book at all. I read some of the theories but I still prefer to think and believe that she did.

>52 jessibud2: Shelley, I somehow saw in more than one place (can't remember where now), that there is a controversy over whether Markham is the actual author. I really wouldn't know what to make of it, so like you, I'll just assume she wrote it. Whoever did write it had a wonderful talent in any case!

>1 Chatterbox: Suz, love what you did with those covers, great job!

Wow, those covers, above, look terrific!

I started a big tome of a book a few months back (in the summer, actually) and got about half way through before putting it aside for other reads (that weighed less in my hands at night in bed!). It is a bio of Pete Seeger, called How Can I Keep From Singing by David King Dunaway. It's actually a really interesting read and I think I will pick it up and try to finish it for the January Biography theme. It could, of course, fit into May's *The Arts* as well, but it's one I really want to get back to so January it is!

I've got an interloan out that I just remembered is a biography - Light horse to Damascus is writer Elyne Mitchell's biography of her father's war experiences in the Australian Light Horse Brigade. She's famous for her Silver Brumby series for children and her father was General Sir Harry Chauvel.

I'm interested in the Light Horse Brigade, they made the last cavalry charge in modern warfare at Beersheva in 1917, the centenary is almost here. I've been reading a lot of children's literature about the ANZACs in Gallipoli and in the Middle East and also the occasional adult book.

After a couple of weeks I have finally finished reorganizing my library to fit in new books. I am joining in with some of the challenges in 2016 to actually read some of the books on my shelves and have a whole new category for biographies and memoirs. I should read one of those although so many of the posts in this thread have such interesting sounding biographies...

I've just starred this thread. Surely I can find a biography on my TBR pile/list to read in January! I may have to go downstairs and see what I find in a bit.

I'm hoping to be more active on LT this year and hoping to do more reading, as well. I mostly read non-fiction, so I'm pleased to find that this thread is so busy and I'm loving the categories you've selected! My plan is to focus on books on hand, either from the library or my shelves. A couple of these titles were started this year and I will be happy to have a nudge to get them finished.

A few I have in mind for January are
The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits
Stanza Stones by Simon Armitage (or May or June)
The Incidental Steward: Reflections on Citizen Science by Akiko Busch (or June)
Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli: A Strange Romance by Daisy Hay (or Feb or Oct)
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (or June)

Also on the cards for Feb or March is
The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj by Anne de Courcy

I think I'll join in. I have many bios on the TBR. One just arrived today - The Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And I also have Sonya Sotomayor's My Beloved World.

>58 muddy21: Interested to see the new book by Daisy Hay! I absolutely loved her book about Keats, Byron, Shelley, et. al, The Young Romantics. If anyone is a poetry buff, and looking for a group biography, I can't recommend that one too highly...

On a separate note, for anyone interested in the Sally Mann memoir (mentioned by Ilana, above in >51 Smiler69:), it's a Kindle special sale today only, for $2.99 or $3.99. (Can't remember how much exactly...)

Just dropping breadcrumbs.
I try and read one non-fiction a month, so this could be the perfect prompt to pick something different each month.

I have that many biographies to read, it's just a question of picking one. One Christmas I put "biographies of interesting dead people" on my wish list. Since then it's been a bit of a fall back for the family, but I've not always got round to them all...

I think I found the perfect one to read in my TBR pile, The Sea Captain's Wife by Martha Hodes.

>59 catarina1: - The Sotomayor memoir was very good. I listened to it on audio, read by Rita Moreno, who was wonderful. Whatever the format, it's a great book.

Non-fiction is a genre I don't usually select from, so I am accepting this challenge. I am choosing between the following two books: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates or The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne.

The former is excellent, and galvanizing; I haven't heard of the latter, so must scurry off and take a look at it!!

I am going to finish up my last book of the year today (an oldie but goodie and a rare reread for me), To Kill a Mockingbird. Then, tomorrow I will pick up a NF bio that I started this past summer but got set aside to give in to other distractions... It's a bio of Pete Seeger called How Can I Keep From Singing and that will be my first book of 2016. I do have a couple of others lined up in case I finish it sooner than I expect to.

>65 susiearvidson: I just read The World's Strongest Librarian and really enjoyed it!

I've chosen a book for this challenge and am about halfway into it. It's George Kennan: A Study of character by John Lukacs. Kennan was heavily involved in the development of US policy towards the USSR following World War 2, and was at the State Department in the 1930s and 1940s. I first came across him in the bio of Dean Acheson that I read several years ago, and picked this book up at the annual huge secondhand book fair here. I'm really enjoying it so far and it'll be January before I finish it at this rate - it's the 31st here already.

>69 cushlareads: Very interested to hear your thoughts on this. I have a copy of George F. Kennan: An American Life that I have started but it is a huge book.

I am going to be reading either Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive or Borlaug, Volume 2, Wheat Whisperer for January.

I will be reading Changed by Chance - a gift from my niece who is a colleague of the author.

Am at page 122 of The Bolter (almost halfway) and am finding it a very interesting read. Idina Sackville was Nancy Mitford's model for her character "The Bolter" in Love in a Cold Climate, but she seems a bit more complex than I remember Mitford's version of her being.

I started Steve Jobs late last year (because I'd seen the movie and happened upon the book at the grocery store) then set it aside, picked it up again today. I'll be reading Between the World and Me for a local book group. I'm hoping to get to H is for Hawk, but this month may be too optimistic.

I entered a lot of possible books, but think I'm going to start off with an ARC I just received, Finding Fontainebleau by Thad Carhart, and Killers of the King, by Charles Spencer (yes, better known as the current Earl Spencer) about the regicides of Charles I. I expect the latter to be a bit biased, but I'm quite fascinated by the folks who, in the 17th century, were prepared to judicially try and execute an anointed monarch -- and who then were pursued to their own deaths by Charles II when he succeeded to the throne 15 or so years later. Some of them were pursued across Europe, others to New England.

I just finished the last fifty pages of The Diary of Helena Morley, as I was a bit worried I'd forget about it with the new library books tomorrow. It really is a fascinating Virago book, translated by Elizabeth Bishop, and with a introduction by her that describes meeting the author in the 1950s. Helena was the pen name of a young girl living in a rural mining community in Brazil. Her father was from an English family, hence the pen name. The book is her diary of her teenage years, living in the 1890s, so I'm hoping counts in this category.

Helena struggles with school, with her large family (her father is often away mining) and the local community. In her diary she writes about recognisable childhood problems (fights with her brother) and less familiar (being too scared to go talk to a former slave as he is dying). One of the reasons I found this fascinating was that Helena takes the situation of the community post slavery for granted. As a relatively wealthy family, her grandmother had owned enslaved Africans. After they were emancipated, many of whom were unable to leave (women) remained living with her grandmother, and Helena's diary shows a perspective on what that was like.

Next up is a biography of Roger Casement - he's only just left Ireland, so early days yet.

I failed miserably at Non-fiction November, although I did meet my annual goal of at least one nonfiction book per month (I read 14 in 2015). But that just means I still have all (but one) of the books that I hoped to read then.

I have at least two that fit the biography theme:

The Story of Charlotte's Web: E. B. White's Eccentric Lift in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims--I was 6 chapters into this when I stalled out last fall, and would like to finish it. I'm a big fan of Charlotte's Web but not such a fan of White's childhood. I need to get past that.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky just got here from the library and is described as the story of Chiman Abramsky, "an extraordinary polymath and bibliophile, who amassed a vast collection of socialist literature and Jewish history." With a title like that, can you see why it caught my attention? Since it is a library book, it will probably take precedence.

But there is a good chance I will get both of them read, especially since the first qualifies as a book off my own shelves.

I'm working on N. T. Wright's duology, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and it will probably be April before I finish it, so that's another month taken care of!

I started The Folded Clock last night and hope to finish it tomorrow - enjoying it, too!

Starring this thread so I can participate on an occasional, whim-driven basis. I have a few biographies lying about the house so I'll peruse them and decide whether any of them call to me for this month.

Thanks for hosting, Suz!

ETA: Hmm, I do have The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo which might be interesting to dig into.

>77 ronincats: I have The House of Twenty Thousand Books waiting for me at the library, too, but only until tomorrow, so it will be a race to get there before it goes back to its home library and I have to summon it again... I also have a bio of Putin en route to me.

>79 EBT1002: Oh, I have that too--picked it up on sale on my Kindle. It may have to wait for the History month, though, in my case.

>81 ronincats: The Black Count will wait for the History month for me, too, Roni, because I just realized that the book I'm reading right now will totally work for Biographies. It's a wonderful read and I expect to finish it in less than a day.


Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen

I'm reading it for my RL Book Group and I'm absolutely enjoying it. It has made me laugh out loud at least three times in just over 100 pages (so far)!

I can't keep up, adding all these book images to the topper! You'll have to forgive me if I fall behind due to real life...

Suz, for what it's worth, I think you can call it good-enough (even better than good-enough!). The assortment of options represented in the images at the top are lovely, and we can add our own images throughout the thread as we go.

I will be the voice of "no stress" this year. It will get monotonous. :-)

Light Horse to Damascus has turned out to be fiction with a light reference to Mitchell's father's life, so you'll have to remove the cover. She also wrote a nonfiction book about the Light Horse Brigade but no biography.
I've pulled my copy of H is for Hawk out of my 'read me next or else' box so will go for that and the Kazik book.

>79 EBT1002: >81 ronincats: I need to check but I'm fairly sure that I've committed to a group read of The Black Count later this year over in the category challenge or maybe the Dewey Challenge in November.

>79 EBT1002: It's a fantastic book, highly recommended. Although it's quite substantial, I found it very readable. It's non-fiction, but Dumas pere's story is so dramatic it could be fiction. It alao helped fill lots of holes in my knowledge of how all that French revolutionary idealism ended up with Napoleon.

I'm surprised it hasn't been snapped up and made into a film.

Edited to fix the link to the right post. Sigh.

I've got H is for Hawk in my TBR pile, so I'm going to start there. I've been looking forward to it for a while.

I've finished Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing yesterday. :-)

Thank you so much for setting up this challenge, Suzanne. I've loved biographies my whole life. What really got me started was Nancy Milford's Zelda: A Biography. That was in 1970, and I was hooked forever. I have a good collection of them, but they are all in BOXES in the BASEMENT (yes, I'm shouting), since we just moved in November. So I would pull out a well-loved biog for a re-read, but that's just impossible right now. I guess that means I'll have to get a new one (oh drat--ha).

How about James Shapiro's A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Shapiro covers the year 1599, the year when Shakespeare wrote Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. Wow. I'm drawn to this book because I think it's absolutely fascinating that we know so little about the man who was Shakespeare. Sharp focus on one prolific year in Shakespeare's life seems like an excellent strategy for a fuller understanding of Shakespeare the man, his time, and also the plays themselves. One reviewer, who doesn't seem to particularly like the book, calls this "a hitchhiker's guide to the Shakespearean universe." Cute.

Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa by Karin Muller was my first read of the year, and now I'm reading Rickles' Book by Don Rickles.

Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen

I started this book yesterday morning and finished it at 11:59pm (true story!). What a great first read for the new year. Paulsen made me laugh out loud several times and I couldn't put the book down. It was a joy to follow the route of the Iditarod and, after the subsidence of my initial horror that someone so unknowledgeable would take fourteen willing dogs into this insane race, I found myself admiring his honesty, integrity, and ability to learn from his dogs. There are certainly a couple of difficult chapters, one involving a moose and one involving a musher who should be shot on sight, but Paulsen vividly captures the beauty of Alaska and the wisdom and passion of the dogs themselves. The last chapter didn't fit with the rest of the narrative and for that he loses half a star.

Great progress!!

>89 labwriter: Becky, that rang a bell, and yes, I noted that the same author has written another book, about the year 1606, which he dubs "the Year of Lear". I can't remember where I saw it -- was it offered as a ARC to me somehow?? -- but it caught my attention relatively recently. Ah -- I know, it was on sale at Amazon, as part of their Kindle Xmas sale, for only a few bucks. Past tense, alas.

I pulled Rebel Yell off the shelf. I loved Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon so am looking forward to his take on Stonewall Jackson.

I started listening to The Year of Reading Dangerously yesterday. It's read by the author, and he has that quirky British sense of humor I enjoy so much, so it should be a good listen...

>93 witchyrichy: Thanks for your mention of this author. I'm going to check out S. C. Gwynne.

>92 Chatterbox: Drat! I always seem to miss those Kindle specials. Yes, if the 1599 book is good, then I'll read The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.

>95 labwriter: Actually, it was a UK Kindle special... It's still there, so I went back and nabbed it for 1.09 pounds or something silly like that...

I will be a lurker on this site, but I hope to participate now and again. I did finish an excellent autobiography on Jan 1st which was also an ER book for me. The book is by a young neurosurgeon who dies of lung cancer at the age of 37. The book describes his life and promising career and then covers his last year as he struggles with the knowledge of his impending death. The book is When Breath Becomes air

If anyone is inclined to play judge, could you take a look at this book — When Lions Roar — and tell me whether you would consider it to reside in the biography category?

>98 rosalita: - I vote yes.

>98 rosalita: Absolutely!

>98 rosalita: Yep.

>99 katiekrug: & >100 Chatterbox: & >101 EBT1002: Thanks, Katie, Suzanne, and Ellen. I'm still reading Queen Isabella but I hope I'll have time to squeeze that one in, too, since it's a book I actually have on my shelf.

I've have not done a challenge before but I would like to start with this one. I'm not too sure what the process is except reading a book. I just bought Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis so I think that would be a great biography for me to start January. I assume when I have finished the book income back and post my thoughts on the book.

The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits.

The author (novelist & teaches writing at Columbia Univ, NY) kept a diary starting as a youngster. She comes across some of the earliest in storage and pulls them out, expecting to find traces pointing to her future success as a writer, but is surprised to find little more than lists or daily activities. Most entries in her early diaries began with "Today I ..."; the current volume follows the format but with a wider, and deeper, perspective. Each entry is dated, but honestly the dates were not chronologically ordered and did not appear to have much to do with the material that followed - it was a little confusing at first, but eventually I just didn't notice them, other than as a stop/start indicator. The book is a collection of short essays or reflections on various events and stages of the author's life. Some large events, some relatively minor, but very candid and all with something to say and connections made that were interesting to consider. Not a deep book, but an enjoyable read - sort of like a weekend away with a gossipy friend.

>103 hazel1123: That's how it works! I hope you enjoy the book about C.S. Lewis. :-)

On the weekend, I started On Family, Hockey and Healing by Walter Gretzky (father of Wayne). I will likely finish it today. This is the story of a simple, down-to-earth guy and how his life changed drastically after he suffered a stroke at the age of 53. The first part of the book, about Walter's early life and then, raising his 5 kids, was interesting but what I am finding most fascinating is the story, pieced together and told in parts by friends and family, since a huge portion of his memory was wiped out by the stroke, is the story of his actual stroke (aneurism) and the long road back, through healing. The details are all there and it is a real insider's view, not only from his own perspective but from that of his various family members and rehab therapist, as well. He is, in the end, a man of great strength and will and very lucky, too, to be surrounded by an amazing support system of friends and family.
This is a better read than I expected it to be

>103 hazel1123: I would just add to what "dieKatze" said above--you don't have to follow any absolute formula for posting here about your book. I haven't done many challenges either, but I find the ones that I enjoy the most are those where people pop in and post something. If you have something you want to say about the book while you're reading it--please do! I don't think it's necessary to wait until you're finished. If you're loving a biog and still have 700 pages to go, by all means drop in and tell us what you think. I'm remembering when I read the biog of the Mitford sisters, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family. I loved the book and I had such a love-hate relationship with those six crazy sisters--I wanted to share the happy insanity of the book while I was reading it. It also took me about 6 or 8 weeks to read the thing, so it would be too bad to drop of the challenge until you get to the end of one of these doorstop books. I ordered mine (A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599), but it hasn't arrived yet. Ack.

>97 dallenbaugh:. Hi Donna. I see you're a fellow southern Colorado person. I've just moved back to Colorado (original home) after living in the midwest for 25 years. Home is now Cañon City, where we are enjoying the slower pace. Three of my great aunts lived in Walsenburg in the 1930s through the 1960s--funny and wonderful women. Hope to see you posting here!

>108 labwriter: As they say it's a small world, Becky. Thanks for getting in touch although I hope no one minds a personal message or two. We have a lot of books in common. Good to hear from a fellow Coloradoan.

>109 dallenbaugh: I keep looking for the "like" button for posts here at LT. Donna--thumbs up! And just to keep this oriented to the group: I'm going to the library this morning to get my new library card and to look over their history and travel section for something good for February and March. Cheers!

>103 hazel1123: As I noted in the first post, you can pretty much use this thread in any way you want. Come back and chatter about the book as you're reading it, to share what you're discovering with the rest of us. Post a brief comment about the book when you finish, and tell us whether you liked it or not (and why). If it takes you until February or March to finish, so be it -- as I noted, I expect this thread will stay alive as long as people are still reading their biographies, even if many of us move on to the February thread as well. The calendar may move on, but just because the calendar does, doesn't mean you have to. If you want to read biographies all year long, well, this thread will be here... The goal is simply for all the readers who want to participate to do so in a way that makes it interesting and helpful for them -- and to facilitate a lively discussion for the rest of us, more than just a rolling posting of "i'm reading X", of the kind that we had ended up with in the "what we're reading" thread.

On that note...

I finished reading Killers of the King by Charles Spencer, about the regicides who put Charles I on trial and then beheaded him in 1649, bringing to an end the first phase of the English Civil War and (they thought) the English monarchy. They were wrong, and 11 years later Charles II, the king's son, took the throne after Oliver Cromwell's death, promising reconciliation. There were lots of weasel words in his pledges, and within weeks, it was clear those promises didn't apply to the regicides: a wave of blood (literally) would follow amidst a wave of judicial murder. There are some eerie parallels between the rush to predetermined conclusions (death was the desired verdict in both cases) in both the king's case and those of his judges: some 80 men who had brought him to trial and even the soldiers who had stood on the scaffold and formed the execution party. I wanted to read this, I confess, in part because of the author's ambivalent relationship to the current royal family: Charles Spencer is the uncle of two sons of the Prince of Wales and brother to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and might be said to have an antipathetic relationship to royalty. At the same time, he is a member of the establishment (to put it mildly.) He clearly admires the principles of the regicides (if not Cromwell himself), and their willingness to die for their cause (hung, drawn and quartered -- an exceptionally brutal end.) The first third of the book was slow going, and felt as if it covered too much ground I was too familiar with, from reading about the civil war and after reading another book about the regicides, The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History by Don Jordan. If you want a fictional take on the aftermath of the regicide tale and the manhunt, try The Traitor's Wife by Kathleen Kent, set in New England. Fascinating, for what this story says about justice versus revenge, and governance versus ruling. 4.15 stars.

I'll probably move on to read Finding Fontainebleau, an ARC (advance reading copy) of an upcoming memoir about the author's relationship with a famous royal chateau in France.

>106 jessibud2: That book about Wayne Gretzky's father sounds good to me. I often read hockey bios. In fact, over the weekend, I finished the bio of the beloved Blackhawks' defenseman, Keith Magnuson. Magnuson, the Hawks "policeman" during the 1970's rarely scored any goals but he was the team leader.

Keith Magnuson by Doug Feldmann was a very good look at Magnuson's live and tragic early death in a car accident (the car was driven by his friend and former NHL star Rob Ramage). Beyond his on-ice exploits, the author took a look at Magnuson's early life, his charity work, and his post-hockey business career.

I read quite a few sports bios and those written by Feldmann are better than most.

Next up: The new bio of the "forgotten" Kennedy sister, Rosemary. The book is Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson.

>112 lindapanzo: - I also like to read bios of sports figures, as well as any people who have overcome serious obstacles in their lives. It helps keep my own ups and downs in proper perspective! The Gretzky book is hardcover and I am trying to go through those on my shelves as well, so I can move them on and make more room! However, my book-in-the-bag for when I travel by subway (smaller in size and paper back) is Michael J. Fox's Always Looking Up. I have read his 2 other books and loved them so this one is something I am looking forward, too as well.

>113 jessibud2: One added attraction for me of the Keith Magnuson bio is that Magnuson was not a star player. He was a fighter/enforcer who was also the team leader. Chicago fans loved him but he didn't get a lot of glory. As such, there wasn't all that much in the book about actual games, unless him getting into a fight was a key point. His injuries and how he bounced back was a key component.

That Gretzky one sounds good. When Gretzky published his autobiography back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I recall waiting in line at a suburban B. Dalton's bookstore to get a signed copy from him.

Usually, though, I tend to like biographies of the not-so-famous or, alternatively, someone famous but with a different angle. For instance, I've seen plenty of biographies about members of the Kennedy family but have never seen one before about Rosemary.

I just finished The Secret History of Wonder Woman and reviewed it on my thread. I didn't realize that there were many threads that led to the creation this comic book character that involved Margaret Sanger and her sister, her niece, the invention of the lie detector, early feminism, and more.

>114 lindapanzo: - That book about Rosemary Kennedy sounds really interesting. I've read much about the Kennedys but not about her, as you say

>115 torontoc: - Cyrel, I recently read something about that book and made a note to myself to find it! I love stuff like that, when so many seemingly unrelated strands come together

I am going to start the biography Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen a bit later this month. Lots of interesting books being discussed on this thread so far.

The book on Rosemary Kennedy had very good reviews and was discussed on several talk shows. The New York Times Book Review podcast interviewed the author and I am sure that interview is available somewhere.

#1 done! On Family, Hockey and Healing by Walter Gretzky (yes, Wayne's dad). This was actually a better read than I expected. I remember hearing the news when Walter had a stroke, back in 1991 but never really knew much of what happened after that. This book was published 10 ears after his stroke, and is his story of his early life, his years raising his family and of the stroke itself. But it is also a story of his long, arduous road to recovery, pieced together with the help of family, friends and his rehab therapist, (who, in fact, later became his son-in-law) because so much of his memory had been lost in the stroke. Having spent many years teaching kids with physical and cognitive disabilities, several of whom were ABI (acquired brain injuries), I found the details of Walter's rehab to be of particular interest. But truthfully, there is so much serendipity involved, the luck of having someone there at the moment who actually recognizes the symptoms, gets him to the hospital quickly and then, having the support system around him to provide the love, patience and intensive rehab necessary - so many people aren't that lucky. It's a great success story and Walter not only made a remarkable comeback, but continued his *new* life with renewed energy, devoting himself to helping others, coaching young kids, and doing charitable work for organizations such as the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind) and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. He is a natural storyteller and while parts of the book were heartbreaking, there were some truly hilarious moments, as well. He has such a natural positive nature, such integrity and humour, and fortunately, that was not diminished by the stroke. He ends the book reminding people of what the warning signs of stroke are, in the hope that education and awareness will help others reach the recovery that he was so fortunate to have had.

This post is copied and posted from my main thread, where my tickers are. I am not sure I want to be doing that for very book. What do all you folks do, if you post on multiple threads for challenges?

Good question, jessibud2! I thought I should perhaps have just posted a link to the review in my thread but couldn't remember/figure out how to link to a specific post rather than to the head of the thread. Perhaps someone else can help?

I probably will cut & post any comments I make on my main thread, so I may not be the right person to ask... It's just ctrl c and then ctrl v, so not a bit hassle, really. I'm not writing reviews, for the most part.

>119 muddy21: There's a part of this wiki http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Basic_HTML_/_How_to_do_Fancy_Things_i... that explains how to link to a specific message.

Personally, I would probably just copy and paste a review that I had already written on a thread elsewhere or the book's page.

Yes, copying and pasting is what I did. And thanks for the wiki link - I was sure it was there, just couldn't see it.

>119 muddy21:, >120 Chatterbox:, >121 Tara1Reads: - Thanks for the input. I have no problem copying and pasting, I just thought it a bit redundant and wondered if others did this as well. I realize that not everyone follows everyone else's personal individual threads but might follow the challenge thread.

>123 jessibud2: Exactly... I can get quite bad about following individual threads when I'm busy, but I'll try to keep up with this one (especially since I feel responsible for it...) That said, this should be a LOW STRESS challenge, so NO responsibility to do anything that you don't want to when you finish a book. If all you want to do is say that you finished, that's fine, too.

I've finished Lucy Worlsey's Courtiers: The Secret History of Kensington Palace which could be described as a biography as Worsley follows the lives of a select few courtiers and servants of the courts of King George I and King George II (so 1714 to 1760) as well as the royal family. She takes as her inspiration the King's Staircase at Kensington Palace which is decorated with pictures of the court (royals, courtiers and servants).

I enjoyed learning more about the two Georges but my favourite royal was Queen Caroline, the wife of George II, who was quite an intellectual and interested in science and the arts to the extent that she was instrumental in popularising the new smallpox vaccine. The lives of the courtiers give a good impression of life in the first half of the eighteenth century (albeit focused more on the upper end of society) and underlined the difference in morals and culture between the early eighteenth century and the later eighteenth/early nineteenth. A good read (with just the right amount of gossip).

I am going to hijack the non-fiction thread for a minute so that all of you who live in the Boston area can add to your reading lists.

Librarything is giving away free passes to the American Library Association winter meeting. The conference will be held in Boston, MA starting this coming Friday, January 8, 2016 and ending on Monday, January, 11, 2016. The passes will get you into the exhibit hall.

Here is the link for the free passes to ALA Boston. They are courtesy of the LT Goddess Abby Blachley.

https://www.compusystems.com/servlet/ar?evt_uid=314&oi=1Trx3hK26xzHoIiGjo9vo...
That's the link to use for free exhibit-only passes!
Best,
Abby

You have to have a lanyard and name tag to get into the exhibit hall. To do that you will take the printed out pass from the above link to the registration area. Go to the line that says Exhibits Only Passes. Once you get that name tag you can then go to the exhibit hall. The pass will be good for all three days of the conference. The passes will not get you in anywhere else but the exhibits. You can get a special pass if you are handicapped, otherwise wheeled apparatus' of any kind are not allowed on the exhibit hall floor.

The exhibit hall is a big wonderland of free, or very reduced price books, and all other things library. The publishers will be giving away ARC (Advance Reader's Copies) of books that will be published between January 2016 to June 2016. They will often sell books as well. Usually paperbacks will be $5.00 and hardbacks will be $10.00. If you are unsure if the books are free or not, just ask one of the sales reps in the booths. They will be happy to help you - but remember that the booths can get quit crowded and so the sales reps can't give you their undivided attention.

I would recommend that if you want to attend that you come on Saturday or Sunday, as those will be full days in the exhibit hall. There will be authors galore on those two days. There will be adult, YA, and children's authors. In the last few years it seems that there are more and more children's authors who will be signing books, but there will be plenty of both. Many of these authors will be new and unknown authors who the publishers want librarians to get to know and then push their books to the public. Often publishers will have free books that the authors will sign for you.

You will get a book that will guide you around the various exhibits in the hall. The exhibits are grouped by type so the book publishers will be in one area, the graphic novel publishers in another. Please take the time to visit the LT booth and talk with Tim and Abbey. They love to hear from LT members.

You can bring suitcases and check them at the bag check. You can't take rolling cases into the exhibit hall without a special pass. You can go in and out of the exhibit hall once you have the name tag, so you can use the suitcases to store your swag and books while you go back to the exhibit floor for more ARC's. (Ask Joe about how many trips he has made in the past to the bag check area!)

I will be around, but have a busy day lined up for Saturday, as I have committee meetings and have a big meeting scheduled for that day. If you want to get me, please e-mail me at this address. bstrnad@ua.edu I will be checking my e-mail while at the conference. You can also post to my profile page here on LT. I will check it when I can do so.

I would love to meetup with any LT members who will be in Boston. Coffee late in the afternoon is great as my feet and shoulders hurt by the end of the day on Sunday. I will also be free for lunch on Monday, but let me know via e-mail if you would like to meetup and I will be happy to do so.

>126 benitastrnad: I will be there on Sat and Sunday; was perusing the program yesterday but finding it a bit hard to figure out what ARCs are available. Guess it will be a matter of "wait and see"!

I think some people had questions about having to put in a company name when they registered -- if you have any advice on what to do there, for people who might not be employed FT, that would be great. (I just used the name of one of the papers I write for, albeit without their knowledge...)

#127
Look at what authors will be there. Usually the ARC's will be that authors next book, or one that was published in the fall of 2015. There will be lots of YA and children's authors, so this is a good time to pick up gifts that you can have inscribed and be sure to get the author to date the inscription.

Yes, I've done that; went through the program last night. Alas, as you say, mostly children's and YA, and I'm mostly interested in adult fiction and nonfiction! I could look for gifts for my bookaholic nephew, but he now prefers to read adult nonfiction, so mebbe not so much. We'll see. I go to BEA every year, and LJ usually has a guide to help people figure out what will be available. I should putter over there and see what's what. The good news is that my second cousin who lives out in California will be there as well! I'm very pleased.

I've finished The Greater Journey and rated it 4 1/2 stars. It was a pleasure to listen to, and I learned a lot. My further comments can be found on my thread.

I just finished Indian Creek Chronicles. This was a pleasant, although not great, read. It is a young man's account of spending seven months, including the winter, in a canvas tent in the isolated Selway-Biterroot Wildnerness Area. He is hired by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and his sole job is to chop the ice every morning over a pond that contains salmon eggs. The nearest phone is ten miles from his tent, at an empty ranger hut. Fromm's writing is good, and he is likable. This is not an amazing survival story, but it is a fairly interesting account of man versus the elements and loneliness, albeit with some modern amenities, such as gas for his stove. Fromm learns to hunt, cure meat, cook and bake over a stove, make his own moccasins, etc, and he is an appreciative observer of the animals and wilderness around him.

Thanks for Indian Creek Chronicles, Karen. It sounds like one I'll watch out for.

I'm reading H is for Hawk, which is described as a memoir.

>130 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks for the reminder of that book... It's another that has languished on my TBR list since purchasing/ordering it after briefly meeting the author at a press event for a family history massive thing in Salt Lake City at the home of the Mormon Tabernacle choir -- that massive, massive forum. It was very cool to meet McCullough in a small group of about a dozen people first, and then to hear him speak/read to tens of thousands of people later that evening. (This was when I was hoping to write a book about what made people batty about genealogy, and was working on a story for Barron's about all the genealogy businesses springing up, like Ancestry.com.)

Even after reading so many LT reviews on H is for Hawk, I am still a little surprised how dense it is. It's going to be a good read.

>131 karspeak: I read Indian Creek Chronicles a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I liked the progression of his skills and his growing appreciation of his world.

Just finished Hold Still by Sally Mann. Great writing by a woman who leads an interesting life and has a fascinating family background. Definitely recommended to readers who enjoy memoirs, art history and process, philosophy or the South.

Instead of reading the memoir by Thad Carhart, Finding Fontainebleau, I seem to have started reading One of Us by Asne Seierstad. It's about Anders Breivik, the Norweigian who ran amok and killed politicians and students on an island in Oslo a few years ago; I think it mostly qualifies as a biography... It's depressing, but insightful.

>135 nittnut: It's very possible that I got that book rec from you!

I just started Catherine the Great, which has a lot of LT love. The author, Massie, won a Pulitzer for a previous book on Peter the Great.

>138 karspeak: I liked that Massie book, but didn't adore it. Massie knows the period, but primarily through translated materials; he doesn't read Russian, so hasn't been able to consult the untranslated Russian-language stuff about Catherine and her era. (Of which there is plenty.) That said, Catherine was such a European monarch, and he really emphasizes her role as an Enlightenment ruler, that it works out well, and he's a great prose writer.

>139 Chatterbox: Interesting point about his not accessing the untranslated materials.

I've started Fast Girl, memoir by Suzy Favor Hamilton, former Olympic runner who struggled with mental illness. Interesting so far...

I have started Clem Attlee yesterday en route to Malaysia and am really enjoying it so far.

Oh all you people who have finished your books! I have started Mary Kingsley's massive Travels in West Africa. Already I like her wit and style.
>138 karspeak: (I haven't gotten to *Catherine* yet, but I thought that Peter the Great was stupendous!)

Hello Everyone,

I am new to the group, but not to LT; I hope to be more active this year. I am mostly reading memoirs, biographies, and non-fiction this year, as I continue my last year's theme of reading about Hollywood, or rather I should say the film industry. Last year was the first year my reading skewed 2:1 for non-fiction in general; I believe the ratio will be more of the same in the new year.
>136 brenpike: I am planning on reading Sally Mann's book as an audio. I was pleased to discover that audible has included a pdf of her photographs. She's reading the book, too, which I prefer, too. I'll overlook most lack of polish in favor of an author's speaking voice. If i can't finish it this January (unlikely) , I'll slide it into the "Arts" month.

I finished Women I've Undressed, which is the lackluster (to put it mildly) memoir of the triple Oscar winning costume designer from the Golden Age Of Hollywood. I have a review in my main thread.

I will polish off Five Came Back today .It's a biography of Huston, Ford, Wyler, Capra, and Stevens. I am pondering which way to go after this: Elia Kazan and forward to the HUAC, or back-filling to Stephen Bach's bio of Leni Riefenstahl, since I just watched "Triumph of the Will". It has taken me a long time to read Harris's book, as I've stopped to watch a propaganda film by each of the directors. I have it in hard copy (a gift from ahem--Christmas of 2014), but this would have made a fantastic enhanced ebook with clips of some of the movies. Everything's on youtube or the Library of Congress, so that's good.

I am also listening to Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers which is about the famous B movie director. I do want to keep pushing the boundaries of my reading, and this fills the ticket! It's not as lurid as it sounds; the author was a production manager for Corman for a decade, and she has her doctorate in English Literature from UCLA. (Roger liked to keep things classy!) He's in my 1001 Movies;so I'll be watching "The Masque of the Red Death", too

>143 LizzieD: Not to worry, Peggy. I'm still waiting for my book for this challenge to show up at the house. Maybe I need to choose something else?

I have a copy of Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, a memoir by Ruth Reichl. Maybe I'll start that one. I haven't read any of her other books. She says that this picture is really her on the cover, a photo taken by her father in 1955.

>145 labwriter:

I liked it. Her second book...not so much.

Green pork chops. I'll say no more!

Jumping in on this challenge, I just found it! I have quite a bit of non-fiction lined up to read this year for my other LT group, the TBR Challenge.

Yesterday, I finished Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam, a memoir by Asra Q. Nomani. Very interesting book about her personal hajj journey, and advocating for moderate Islam and an increase in women's rights. You can see a lot of parallels between her story, and the erosion of women's rights in fundamentalist groups found in many of the world's religions.

I bought this book years ago, I think....or someone gave it to me. Or the house elf put it there. I do know it has been on my bookshelf for quite a few years! Honestly, I think all the negativity in the American news recently over Muslim immigrants has what spurred me to finally read it this year.

>82 EBT1002: Winterdance! I loved it! For me, it was a spontaneous read...I had never even heard of the Iditarod when I picked it up. It remains one of my all-time favorite memoirs.

#144
Your year long read about Hollywood sounds great. I have been wanting to read that biography of Heddy Lamar I have on my shelves as well as that of Marilyn Monroe, but other books keep calling to me instead. Instead of Hollywood, I try to read one biography of a fashion great each year. In 2014 I read Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life by Lisa Chaney and in 2015 I read Empress of Fashion a biography of Diana Vreeland. I am not sure what I will read this year about fashion but there is that biography of Elsa Schiaparelli that interests me.

Sometimes I find myself, planned or not planned, reading about something in-depth. Usually, it is the unplanned string of reads that is the most rewarding. Planned often doesn't go as well. This year I want to do some reading about women authors and so am starting out with a shorter biography of Louisa May Alcott. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. I also want to read Edens Outcasts and What There is to Say We Have Said and from there I will move where the spirit leads me.

>149 benitastrnad: I was interested in women and magazine publishing a while back. Diana Vreeland--what a character! I have the illustrated biog of her by Eleanor Dwight--Diana Vreeland. The book cover is plain red, of course. About 90% of my books are in boxes because of a recent move. So frustrating. That group of female magazine editors in the 1930s or so in New York is such a fascinating bunch.

>144 gaeta1: Welcome to the fray! I have a galley of a dual bio of Dietrich and Riefenstahl sitting here, but may not (well, will not...) get to it this month... A friend of mine has written a novel about Dietrich, which appears in May, and I'll have to read that, of course. (For my part, I'd like to turn Hedy Lamarr's life into a novel...) Looking forward to seeing what else you manage to put into these categories.

>149 benitastrnad: I completely agree about the unplanned element. The more I try to organize and structure my reading, the more frustrated I become.

>147 abergsman:. Wow, Asra looks glam in that photo! (Well, she is, but...) If anyone is interested in following what she is doing, you can take a look at MuslimReformMovement.org. I've had some debates with her (we're former colleagues) about the fact that she's ending up with some odd allies on the right as a result of some of her positions -- it's a difficult line for an idealist to talk, and she has very high principles and remains astonished (to my astonishment) that the establishment and political Islamists are hostile to her and not respectful. I really hope she can carve out the middle path she is trying to create, as she and those like her are the best possible counter-argument to the lunatics who cite the Sword surah of the Qu'ran and say all Muslims are just itching to murder us all in our beds. Sigh. This book (or the original version of it) was one she wrote when her son was still very young; it came out nearly a decade ago, and was originally titled "Standing Alone in Mecca". I think it has been reissued, and is very worth reading, in light of everything happening out there (including and especially the mass beheadings with which the Saudis greeted the New Year and that have destabilized the entire Middle East still further...)

>145 labwriter: I have read several of Ruth Reichl's memoirs. They are very enjoyable. Be warned though, they will make you very hungry. lol

>151 Chatterbox: I started the dual biography of Dietrich and Riefenstahl, but it seemed dry and disjointed. Maybe it was a translation problem? I enjoyed Final Cut: Heaven's Gate by Bach, so I think I'm going to read Bach's book on Riefenstahl.
>149 benitastrnad: I want to read another--better book--on Hollywood fashion. Any ideas?

I wasn't going to join in this challenge but I've been reading more NF recently so why not! I'm currently reading Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss which at least partly fits into the category of memoir, although it could also be included in the travel category. Enjoying it so far...

I picked up Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing from the library yesterday and stayed up all night reading it. I found it a wonderful book about books and reading. I definitely need to get my own copy so I can peruse it again when the mood strikes.

>151 Chatterbox: If you ever do write that book about Hedy Lamarr, I'll be pre-ordering it the minute it becomes available. She's one of my absolute heroines of history and I would love a well-written book about her.

Coming Ashore by Catherine Gildiner. I just finished this very entertaining memoir. .In this volume the reader follows the author and her life in college at Oxford,her studies in Toronto and we view the choices that she made. The book is very funny in places.At Oxford, the author rides a bicycle through a post office window, learns how to behave at high table at the college, helps her friend plot to sleep with Jimi Hendrix and understands the problems of class in English society. In Toronto,Gildiner studies at Victoria College at the University of Toronto,and lives at Rochdale College in the ashram of a drug dealer in the early 1970's. Rochdale was a failed experiment in independent learning that turned into a very interesting place for alternate living. The reader learns how the author changes her studies and finds the love of a good person. I studied at University of Toronto in the late 1960's -early 1970's so I recognized the references, places and some of the situations.

>151 Chatterbox: I have had my copy of Asra's book for probably at least 6 years. I'm not sure if there is a newer edition released. I would be curious to know where things currently stand at the Morgantown Mosque. Most of my Muslim friends do not regularly attend a mosque, and those who do, have not experienced such an extreme gender segregation such as the one described in her book. Our local mosque here in Charlotte holds services in one large room, with a divider separating men and women that goes down the middle of the room (rather than front to back separation).

>158 abergsman: I'll ping her and ask her, though I may not hear back for a few days; she's swamped with all this hijab solidarity debate stuff... A divider down the middle (to the extent that a division is seen necessary in worship) sounds much more reasonable. In mosques that I've been in in Turkey and Morocco, women are in the back, or sometimes not there at all. In some countries, women aren't expected to pray in a mosque, but at home.

Just finished reading One of Us by Åsne Seierstad, which is in large part a biography of Anders Breivik, who committed Norway's sole act of terrorism and claimed it was justified as an attack on "cultural Marxism" and multiculturalism. Given the recent events in Paris, I wanted to read this; Breivik is part of that zeitgeist; the folks in Europe who believe European culture is under siege by Islam. Except that, as Seierstad deftly points out, he came to that view more as a result of being a misfit himself. As a child, he had friends among the immigrants, who ended up fitting in better in Norwegian society than he did and making their way in life more successfully than he did. As his life fell apart, however, he turned to Norwegian society's permissiveness, and the Labor Party, as the culprits for all that was wrong. As the anti-immigrant sentiment rises, I worry that the world is going to end up spawning more Breiviks among the disaffected, and this book didn't do much to ease those fears; that said, it was an excellent biography and recounting of events. A few small flaws -- Seierstad sometimes skips over a few years in Breivik's life if she feels that nothing happens worth mentioning, which feels jarring (and although she also juxtaposes his life with those of some of his victims, and though the contrast is quite telling, the chronology is off). She also doesn't give the reader enough of a context of the Norwegian justice system to understand what's happening in the trial -- Breivik is suddenly before a panel of five judges, including three lay judges -- but who are they? what's a lay judge? That's assuming a lot of knowledge of the legal system of a small Nordic country among English language readers elsewhere, when a few paragraphs could have been inserted, just as she did when providing political background. She assumes the same knowledge when mentioning the name of Norway's WW2 collaborationist leader, Vikdun Quisling, in passing and assuming everyone will know precisely who he is and what fate he met. There's a reference to Breivik passing a statue that appears to be famous, but not mentioning which one it is, etc. All that stuff knocked it back to a 4.5 star book, which is still pretty good...

>159 Chatterbox: A lay judge is a person without judicial education who, along with the judge determines if a person is guilty of a crime or not and how long they will be sentenced for if they are guilty. It's a little bit like a mini-jury. Except they work with the judge and discuss things together with he/she rather than being isolated. And it's a part time job that you can choose (well, you have to be accepted, but you're not forced to do it) and you get paid for it.
The same (or similar) system exists in Norway, Sweden and Finland (possibly Denmark too, not sure).
If you have any questions about the court system in Scandinavia and the other Nordic, ask away. I should be able to answer at least some of them.

Finished The Bolter some few days ago. I really enjoyed this biography of Idina Sackville - notorious bad girl of the decades between the two world wars. Yes, she was very naughty, but that was only part of the story. Overall, I thought she was a warm and wonderful person with issues who was not fully appreciated by most of society, yet was loved very much by those who knew her well.

If I manage to finish my remaining CAC and BAC reads for January I will hit the TBR piles in search of another biography. And while I'm at it, it's time to dig out something for February. I am really loving this Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

>159 Chatterbox: One of Us is on my list for this year. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

>159 Chatterbox: I am slightly jealous that you have been to Turkey! I was actually on my way to Egypt and Turkey, back in October 2000, via India. The day before we were set to leave India (via ship), the USS Cole was bombed. Since our route would have taken us within very close proximity to the attack, we ended up in Kenya instead. However, I will always remain thankful that we hadn't left India yet when that happened....I would guess a boat of 700+ American students on a study abroad trip could have made an equally appealing target to al Qaeda at that time.

>161 Fourpawz2: Thanks for mention of The Bolter. She had a dog named Satan? Sounds like a good thumping read. Have you read Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love? I haven't, but I think I would probably be more interested in reading the biography.

>164 labwriter: - the very one! Yes, I have read the Mitford book. Loved it.

Clem Attlee by Francis Beckett

An admiring and extremely engaging biography of indisputably the Labour Party's finest Prime Minister and the man who lead the team in the immediate post war period that introduced the Welfare State into the UK and started the process of disengagement from Empire.

Attlee was a chronically shy, understated and often under-rated little man who in many ways rose unexpectedly and against the odds. Labour's electoral wipe out in 1935 enabled him to become deputy to George Lansbury and he took on Leadership of the party over and in preference to more charismatic characters such as Dalton, Cripps, Bevin and particularly Morrison who emerges here as his overly-ambitious foe.

There were contradictions in Attlee as a public-schoolboy from a well to do family of lawyers who saw poverty at first hand in London in the Edwardian age and had it change his outlook to life. He served with distinction as a Major in the Great War and was the second last of the Empire forces to leave the Gallipolli theatre of war. He remained very much left of centre all his life and was the leading part of the most radical reforming government ever immediately after serving loyally as Churchill's deputy during the Second World war.

He was terse and ruthless in culling colleagues who didn't quite perform but a great lover of poetry and mind exercises and list-making all in keeping with my own personal weaknesses. A man I admire greatly and he is done full justice here.

Interesting to note that Francis Beckett's father was originally election agent to Attlee before going on to a similar role for the ultimately disgraced British socialist turned fascist Oswald Moseley. The son is dismissive of the father in many ways but clearly gained valuable insights into Labour's great leader that helped bring him to life in this book.

>166 PaulCranswick: Thanks for that, Paul! My awareness of the Labour party kind of vaults right from Keir Hardie over to Wilson, which is rather shameful...

>166 PaulCranswick: - Great review, Paul!

I've been reading through this thread, thinking that it would be nice to participate in a challenge, but that biographies are not my thing;))
But I realized that my definition of a biography was quite narrow, and several of the books sound really interesting. Like the Gary Paulsen. Unfortunately our library doesn't have it. And H is for Hawk, they do have it, but it's not available right now. Maybe I'll come to that later, it sounds really interesting.

So I started looking on my own shelves, and found a book that I could do a reread of.

The pleasure of reading
edited by Antonia Fraser. Published in 1992. I must have bought it then, on a whim. It's a series of short stories by a number of authors, about their youth, their experiences with reading while growing up, about writing, what books they liked, and their favorite books right now (what books to take to a desert island). I remember enjoying those stories, but I can reread them easily, as I don't remember any specifics.

I read the first just now, Catherine Cookson. She was born in 1906, and she was 84 when she wrote it. It's lovely. I'll quote you the first paragraph:

"When did I first start to read? I don't know, I can only recall when I was first aware of reading: I was sitting in the corner of the kitchen and was startled by Kate's (my mother's) voice yelling at me, 'I'll put that book in the fire! Get it out of your hand.'

I can't recall ever reading a book of hers, but now I would like to.

I'm not going to read the book all in one go, one by one, so it will take some time to finish;)

I started reading Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson for another challenge and realized it is also a biography. It is big enough to count for two challenges at almost 600 pages not counting the notes etc at the end! I am about half way through. It's interesting but sometimes hard to keep track of all the players.

I've finished Queen Isabella by Alison Weir. I knew nothing about her or this era of English history (early 14th century) so I really feel like I learned something, in addition to being an interesting tale of an English queen who led an invasion to depose her husband the King and put her son on the throne, only to suffer her own deposition of sorts when her son returned the favor a few years later. Weir's stated aim was to rehabilitate Isabella's reputation as a bloodthirsty "She-Wolf of France", and as far as I could tell she succeeded.

>159 Chatterbox: I've thought about reading One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, Suzanne, but I'm just not sure I want to read this story right now. I appreciate your thoughtful review, and I'll add the book to the list.

OK, I'm crying UNCLE. My Year in the Life of William Shakespeare didn't come last week, so I'm getting it on audiobooks. It will come eventually, and then I'll have the paper copy to refer to which I find very helpful for some audiobooks--probably this is a good one to have both. Hooray, at last I can start the darned book.

I finished my second book for this challenge, then promptly came down with a beastly cold during which it was hard to concentrate long enough to read more than children's picture books, much less to write commentary. But I'm now on the mend and despite the weather (cold, windy+, and very rainy - but *no snow* & therefore *no shoveling*) I return to report...

Phoning Home: Essays by Jacob M. Appel. The author has a varied background in both education and practice - lawyer, medical doctor, university professor of both bioethics and literature, published author of fiction and non-fiction. His essays explored topics I enjoy reading and thinking about including familial vs cultural inheritances and expectations ("An Absence of Jell-O") as well as lots of ethical considerations: those of the current generation with regard to the actions or lack thereof of those who came before us ("The Man Who Was Not My Grandfather"), the myriad ramifications of social injustices, as well as the contradictions encountered in medical practice where the overall view may or may not need to be tempered by the need to consider the humane realities of individual patients. My favorite essay was "Two Cats, Fat and Thin" in which a small but nonetheless traumatic loss that the author suffered as a child is revisited to stimulate fruitful discussion in his current ethics classes. An enjoyable and thought-provoking (in a mild and reflective way) read.

>173 muddy21: Enjoyed your book blurb about Phoning Home, and I'll eagerly await whatever comes next here for you.

The Poet's Tale : Chaucer and the Year that made the Canterbury Tales takes the concept used so successful by James Shapiro for Shakespeare and applies it to the man often credited as the founder of English literature. For the most part I enjoyed reading it and thought it gave me (very much an ignoramus on all things Chaucer beyond a brief look at the Prologue a million years ago in school) what I wanted: a relatively shortish explanation of who Chaucer was and what led him to write the Tales.

Although Chaucer was a civil servant and an MP, he's left precious little evidence of his life. A couple of times I noted that the same pieces of evidence are recycled to prove two different points, and for me at least, I was never entirely convinced that Chaucer's position as paid supporter of a failing King was clear. I could have done with a lot less financial information on the wool trade, and more anecdotes about monks getting set up for blackmail by scheming landlords in medieval Westminster.

Those moans aside, I most enjoyed reading about daily life in medieval London, the production of copies of his writings and the growing reading public that found Chaucer after his death. His discussion of how Chaucer's writing shows a changing attitude to being the identified author (previously mocked as being something the Italians did) was new to me and thought provoking.

I'm now tempted to find an annotated edition of the Tales to read.

>169 EllaTim: Instant book bullet! I promptly went off and added a copy of that anthology to my Kindle; I think your approach of reading a little bit of it at a time is an excellent one... Glad you joined in to read.

>171 rosalita: The "fun" bit about Isabella was that it was through her that the kings of England ended up claiming the throne of France, igniting the 100 years' war (well, really the 100 plus years war...) the French didn't recognize lines of descent that went through the female, but when her brothers died, she was left as the only direct line of descent from her father (and wasn't there something in her marriage contract to that Edward III based his claim on??) Ergo, Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Joan of Arc, etc. etc. etc. Meanwhile the French nobles supported the claim of Isabella's male cousin on her father's side, the count of Valois. (and later on two Valois princesses would marry English kings...)

>172 labwriter: It was a tough read, and I'm trying to get past the details still...

>175 charl08: Your reservations aside, that sounds fascinating! Chaucer intrigues me -- he had such a front row seat on events! (And he ended up as brother in law to John of Gaunt...) I like the fact, too, that he was representative of the growing power of the mercantile class in London. He's almost as interesting for the various groups he represented, as he was for who he was as an individual. So, another book bullet, and another new book on my Kindle. (the title in the US is slightly different: for anyone who cares, it's Chaucer's Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury.

I've been reading Finding Fontainebleau, an ARC of a memoir by Thad Carhart, comparing his childhood memories of growing up in a house adjacent to the French palace and his later experiences rediscovering life in France and Fontainebleau. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it now, and while it's interesting enough purely as memoir, it doesn't have the transcendent quality that a truly great memoir does, with vivid writing and an overarching theme. (I'm thinking of something like The Hare With Amber Eyes, perhaps, or even Truth and Beauty. It's a kind of random collection of cherished memories juxtaposed with interested observations of a part of France's cultural patrimony today. Great for francophiles, but as a boo, nothing to wow. Respectable, as an achievement is the word I'd choose. Still, fun, because there are things that I read, and laugh at -- the solid ovoid of soap attached to a metal thing from the wall in a washroom -- that I remember from living in Europe in the early 70s, or the scent of coal-burning fires. (This was set in the mid-50s, and by the late 70s, much of what he was describing was already gone; by the early 80s, it was definitely gone...)

Since my copy of James Shapiro's A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599 has yet to show up at the door, I threw in the towel and bought the audio version. Shapiro also narrates the book. This is the sort of book that fills the well. I'm not very far into it, but I'm loving it (and I'm getting a lot done around the house while I listen to it--ha).

Oh nuts. So now I learn I'm listening to an abridged version. This book and I are star-crossed.

>176 Chatterbox: Yes, the Hundred Years' War was just briefly touched on at the end of the book, with Edward III (well, mostly Isabella at first) claiming the French throne. Weir also briefly alluded to how Edward's policy of marrying his sons to daughter of the aristocracy rather than foreign princes led to the foundings of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster and thus the infamous Wars of the Roses. If you have a good book to recommend about that period, please let me know as my interest has been (re)piqued.

H is for Hawk is an interesting sort of memoir. It's part memoir, part training manual and part literature paper. I thought it was well written, and I found the parts about hawk taming and training very interesting. The biologist in me wanted more details on that process and on the hawk itself. The memoir piece about her loss, grieving process and the use of falconry to escape the pain of her life at the moment was also well written and endeavored not to descend into self-pity or whining. I also liked that she acknowledged her depression, and her journey to recognizing it and the need to get help. I did not love the bits about T.H. White. Or perhaps there was just too much of it? I struggled a little to make the connection between her desire to train a hawk and White's. I get the psychological need connection, but perhaps it was a bit too much of a stretch. I'm not sure. It's not as though the content bored me or anything, but for me, the sections on White detracted from her story and her process. I have to dock a star for that, so this was a three star read for me.

>179 nittnut: I liked those bits, and agree that whether or not you like them or appreciate them, make or break the book for any individual reader. For me, the contrast between their different understandings of their struggles to build a relationship with a hawk, and the fact that both were writing about that and both were approaching it to deal, in part, with their own psychological issues. Plus, for me, the big thing was the writing, which I loved.

>178 rosalita: Alison Weir has written a very good general history book about the Wars of the Roses; it was one of her early books. Lancaster and York: The Wars of the Roses. There is Blood Sisters, by Sarah Gristwood, a group bio of some of the women involved in the wars of the roses, which would fit this challenge (!) and that is excellent. There were so many strong, independent women in this era, even though Gristwood focuses only on the women in the nobility. There also were women in the merchant classes, like those in the Paston family (who wrote the famous Paston letters) and Jane Shore, the goldsmith's wife who became Edward IV's mistress and a conspirator in the dealings leading up to the ultimate triumph of the Tudors. If you want some ideas for historical novels, let me know; from a romantic perspective, you can look at books by Anne Easter Smith (but avoid those by Sandra Worth, IMHO; which tend to be very meh...) There are some other rec's I can make, later, if you're interested, but those are some basics.

>180 Chatterbox: Yes, the writing was fantastic. I was thinking about the contrast between Macdonald's book and Eat, Pray, Love, which was a similar sort of memoir of figuring herself out, but never managed to be anything but navel gazing for me, and comparing it to the much more dense and interesting literary style of H is for Hawk. The writing makes a huge difference.

>181 nittnut: Oh, Eat, Pray, Love was one that I couldn't even finish. And yet people tell me that Elizabeth Gilbert can write fiction... I have her big chunkster novel here, on the TBR hall of shame, and it got great reviews. I watched the movie, and that drove me nuts, so I can only imagine how crazy the memoir would make me, when most memoirs tend not to be my thing.

I finished Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter by Kazik (Simha Rotem), it's a relatively quick read. I've wanted to read this since watching Kazik give testimony at the end of Claude Lanzmann's 1985 documentary, Shoah, some of the testimonies on the film are the first time these individuals talked about their experiences.
He was often asked when he came to Israel after the war, how did you survive?, a question which made him feel very guilty for the act of surviving, to the point that he stopped talking about the Holocaust. He was pushed to write his memoir by another survivor, one of the leaders of the ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa/Jewish Fighting Organization) who felt that documentation of their actions was important. In the introduction Rotem makes it clear that he's not a writer, and he related his memoir by dictation, he also says there are incidents he refused to relate, preferring not to bring them to the surface of his own memory. Rotem was very active in helping many Jews in hiding to survive, he fought in the Warsaw Ghetto and escaped through the sewers, and returned trying to rescue more fighters only being partially successful. Later he took part in the fighting in the Warsaw Uprising.
The memoir was the basis for a 1990s miniseries, Uprising.
The other book I was inspired to read by Lanzmann's film was Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski.

For me as well. I thought it evocative, and well-written, but for a memoir on depression and loss it felt a bit distant; the White asides added to my detachment. The end just...dwindled away. I do wish I had listen to this as an audio by the author, but I was all ready listening to an audio book at the time.

I finished Five Came Back and watched 10 (!) movies as a companion. I'm feeling wiped out watching so many movies...and I need to write a review.

>176 Chatterbox:
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! I'd never thought it would be available for Kindle.
Surprised.

Roger Casement was published in 2013, part of a series commemorating the lives of the 16 men who died in 1916 following their part in the Easter Rising (in time for the centenary this year).


The book is clearly written primarily for an Irish audience, knowledgeable about the bones of Irish history: this did cause some headscratching moments for me (hang on, don't we get some mention of how the events at the GPO went down? Why is the present location of his body so important it had to be mentioned at least three times?) but for the most part a straightforward bio of a fascinating life.



Casement spent many years as an influential British government official in Africa and then Latin America. He did well, exposing Boer gun running through Mozambique and working hard to try to restrain and then expose the horrors of the rubber producing industry in the Congo. He has been credited with founding important arguments crucial to human rights campaigning in the 20c. However, he decided that he couldn't continue as a government employee when Home Rule for the whole island of Ireland was rejected, and ultimately worked with the German authorities to try and get arms for the Easter Rising. Arriving on the Irish coast by submarine he was quickly arrested, tried and hanged.

What makes his case even more murky is that the British government used the so called 'black diaries' to accuse Casement of homosexuality (then criminal) and thus try to discredit him in the eyes of Irish catholic supporters. Mitchell even suggests that some of the Irish signaturies to partition after WW1 were forced to authenticate the diaries as a condition to British agreement. This seems a bit extreme to me, as do the accusations of wide scale collusion in covering up government fixing his trial. I suspect most of those involved agreed that he was a threat to their interests rather than any clear organised conspiracy. Mitchell side steps Casement's private life almost entirely, despite the focus on the black diaries in much of the discussion of his death. I would have thought being a gay man in a period when that meant persecution in Ireland and England would explain why he was so motivated to be brave in exposing the horrors in the Congo (very few others did this) and in working for Republicanism. I know others have made this case for other protest movements.



I would have liked more on his African experiences, and the consequences for those victims he spoke and wrote for - I have a couple of Congo books lined up so will move them up the list.

After I wrote the comments above, I found this on the LRB site by Colm Toibin, in a review of two other books on Casement (one by Mitchell).
"Perhaps it was his very homosexuality, and his deep interest in ‘a certain portion of their anatomy’, to quote Eamon Duggan, which made him into the humanitarian he was, made him so appalled. Unlike everyone around him, he took nothing for granted. His moral courage, the absence in him of the slyness of, say, Joseph Conrad, came perhaps from his understanding of what it meant to be despised. He is, pace Sawyer and Mitchell, a gay hero. The Black Diaries should be published in full so that everyone’s prejudices can have a great big outing."

>186 charl08: Have you read King Leopold's Ghost, Charlotte? If not, and you want to read more about Casement and Africa, that would be a great book to follow up with in February, for our History themed month! It's absolutely brilliant, and remains my fave from among Hochschild's books... Liked Toibin's comments about the Black Diaries.

>180 Chatterbox: Thanks for those recommendations, Suzanne. I may be back for more later but these should do me very well for starters.

>187 Chatterbox: I second the recommendation of King Leopold's Ghost

Thanks for the recommendation: this is one of those recommended in Mitchell's book. I'll add it to the pile. The book I'm hoping to read next though is Congo: an epic history of a people which a friend recommended ages ago.

>190 charl08: Congo is on my wishlist too! Looking forward to a review.

>179 nittnut: I've finished H is for Hawk and it's left me distinctly underwhelmed. The writing was good, the hawk training interesting, but it all felt very flat. I lost my father nearly 12 years ago, my mother last year, but there were only 2 small sections where I honestly thought, "Yes, I know what you mean". One was her avoidance of people, the other the visit to the GP with depression. But those two short sections aside, I could feel none of the depth of emotion that I can remember in retrospect of the same experience. I'm not going to claim to have dealt with my father's death any better than she did - in my case I went in mental shock, followed by physical shock and stayed there for 6 months - not classic grief progression, nor a model means of dealing with death. Putting that aside, it didn;t have any of the emotional impact I thought it might, no tears for me here, nothing to move me enough to prompt them. She also annoyed me intensely by describing herself as an orphan when her mother was still alive (curiously absent in this book, mind you). Actually loosing the second parent is quite different from the first, it's different, it opens the old wounds as well as causing new ones. I find I can't recommend it.

>190 charl08:
>191 Oberon: I've got that in French; bought it before the translation was available! Need to get to it one day...

Finished the memoir, Finding Fontainebleau by Thad Carhart, and it was rather meh. It is billed as a book about rediscovering one's childhood and about the palace, but the palace is really the backdrop to some rather choppy, if evocative, memories of a few years of childhood in France in the mid 1950s. It's not bad, but it kind of rambled hither and yon and I kept waiting for some kind of focus to emerge, or something to grip me, as happened in The Hare with Amber Eyes or The Lost Carving by David Esterly, where the author's passion for a building really emerges vividly. This was OK as a series of vignettes, so will appeal to nostalgia fans, but even measured on that score, I kept wondering why I was reading it. 3.75 stars.

>187 Chatterbox:, >189 Oberon: Third the recommendation for King Leopold's Ghost.

>193 Chatterbox: Is that a French translation Suzanne, or did he write it in French as well as Dutch? Always intrigued how countries with more than one official language work (shamelessly ignoring Welsh here. Oops).

>91 EBT1002: and >148 abergsman: I just finished Winterdance and I agree with you this was such a great read - adventure, humor, sadness, joy and determination. Thanks so much for bringing this book to my attention.

>195 charl08: Don't know, really... I just spotted it on Amazon.fr, and a friend of mine (who also speaks/reads French, and who does extensive human rights/civil society work in Congo) strongly recommended it to me. Ergo... :-) I suppose that makes it a candidate for February's reading, doesn't it?!

My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard



My rating:

He had been her first born.
Children were not supposed to pre-decease their parents, they weren't supposed to. That was not the idea.
And to me, what had Dad been to me?
Someone I wished dead.
So why all these tears?

This almost indescribably rich and unputdownable memoir begins with a riff on death, as a physiological process, a phenomenon that simultaneously inspires reverence and horror, and a profoundly transformational event for those who are affected by the passing of the deceased person:

For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Sooner or later, one day, this pounding action will cease of its own accord, and the blood will begin to run toward the body’s lowest point, where it will collect in a small pool, visible from outside as a dark, soft patch on ever whitening skin, as the temperature sinks, the limbs stiffen and the intestines drain.

The moment life departs the body, it belongs to death…None of this is alien to us. We are constantly surrounded by objects and phenomena from the realm of the death. Nonetheless, there are few things that arouse in us greater distaste than to see a human being caught up in it, at least if we are to judge by the efforts we make to keep corpses out of sight.

It seemed to me as though a New Orleans brass band should have accompanied and played alongside Knausgaard during his haunting opening trumpet blast. However, unlike a typical Crescent City jazz funeral march, there will be no posthumous celebration of the life of the dearly departed, in this case Karl Ove’s father. Instead, he gives us an exploration of the man and his slow, downward spiral from a respected teacher, husband and father to a shell of a man, ravaged by alcoholism, poor health and self loathing, who suffers a grotesque and premature death in his childhood home at the side of his demented mother.

Karl Ove began this memoir as a young man, as he struggled to write a new novel and was invigorated but challenged by the demands of being a father to a young child, and the husband of a woman who loves him unconditionally but does not fully satisfy his wants and needs. He reflects on and describes, in great detail, his seemingly ordinary childhood as a sensitive and intelligent boy who seeks acceptance from his distant and judgmental father as validation of his own worth. He develops a taste for alcohol as a teenager, has a series of superficial relationships with girls, and stumbles his way toward a career as a writer.

When his brother informs him of his father’s death, the two young men drop everything and go to their grandmother’s house, to prepare for the funeral and provide support to their father’s ailing mother. Although Karl Ove never gained the love and respect he so desperately sought, he is profoundly affected by his father’s death, and he grapples to understand why it has caused him so much anguish.

My Struggle: Book One could rightfully be described as a navel gazing memoir, similar to others that have been recently written. However, it is much more than that: Knausgaard draws the reader into his story, as it reads like a rich novel with superb dialogue and a compelling story line, and I devoured this book far more quickly than I expected to.

Ultimately, no review, at least not this one, can do justice to this book. I urge you to read this book because it’s one of the best memoirs that I’ve ever read. Read it because it is a fascinating look at the life of a young man, and the troubled relationship between a father and a son. Read it because it is as good as any contemporary historical novel. Most importantly, as many others have said, just read it, despite my insufficient comments about it. You’ll be glad that you did.

I finished the biography Spinoza: A Life by Steven Nadler. An exhaustive biography of the great philosopher who was excommunicated in the 17th century by Amsterdam's Jews, and went on to be an important influence on Leibniz and other philosophers. Years ahead of his time, Spinoza believed that God and Nature were one and the same. His critics considered him an atheist.

I finished my nonfiction book for this month's challenge.



The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky (340 pp.)

I ordered this from the library as soon as I saw it--with a title like that and the cover! But it is not primarily a book about books. It is a memoir of the author's grandfather, a Russian Jew who immigrated to England in 1931 after his famed rabbi father was released from 2 years in a Siberian labor camp. Chimen Abramsky was first a dedicated Communist who collected seminal Socialist literature and then, when that dream became varnished, one of the world's foremost experts of historical Judaica. Organizing his reminisces and the history of Chimen's life and the illustrious people who visited his house by the rooms of the house and the different collections they held, Sasha pulls together an interesting account of the people in England integral to the Jewish Communist Committee, the interaction of London Jews with the formation of Israel, and those involved in discovering and dealing with historical books.

>197 Chatterbox: No worries. Was just curious if you knew. It looks like quite a brick from the reviews, so I better clear the decks first!

Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive by Joan Wilson

My January book for the non-fiction challenge is a biography of former President Herbert Hoover. I picked this up at the Hoover Presidential Library in Iowa. I stopped at the library coming back from a trial. I had higher hopes for the book especially because it was recommended to me by one of the senior librarians at the library who was kind enough to come out and offer opinions on a number of different books about Hoover.

Hoover had an extraordinary life and deserves to be remembered as more than a hapless bystander to the Great Depression. Born in West Branch Iowa in a tiny home (I saw it - it is tiny) to Quaker parents, Hoover was orphaned at age 9. Hoover went to Oregon to live with extended family and started at Stanford University in 1891. This was Stanford's inaugural year. Hoover obtained a degree in geology and became a mining engineer. Hoover traveled the world working for various mining companies. He lived for years in the hinterlands of places like Australia, China, and Russia. In the process, he became fantastically wealthy through investments in mining, ultimately setting up a consulting business to fix "sick" mines. He was a millionaire several times over before he was 40.

Given Hoover's wealth and international experience, Hoover was involved with expatriate community in London when the First World War broke out. He organized a major return of Americans abroad, financing many of them personally. In 1917, Hoover was asked to lead the U.S. Food Administration. Following the war, Hoover led the food relief effort for much of Europe. He saved millions from starvation, earned a reputation as an efficient organizer and was known globally as The Great Humanitarian.

Following his success in providing relief, both political parties tried to recruit Hoover who was then one of the most popular men in America, a symbol of modernity, efficiency and compassion. Hoover chose the Republican party (arguably he had been a Republican much earlier but was always abroad during elections). Hoover became the Secretary of Commerce in the Harding administration (and later Coolidge administration) and continued his success as an organizer. He greatly expanded the reach of the Commerce Department and set about modernizing the American economy. He was probably the most powerful Commerce Secretary in American history.

Hoover ran for and won the 1928 Presidential election. His presidency started out well but was quickly overshadowed by the Crash and Depression. FDR beat Hoover in 1932.

Having been a young man when he became President, Hoover had a long post-presidency. Hoover lived until age 90, dying in 1964. In his post-presidency he was a fierce critic of the New Deal although most of his criticism was private. He remained active in Republican politics although he was not as vocal as others.

Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive covers Hoover's extraordinary life story. It also looks closely at Hoover's actions as Commerce Secretary and later as President and makes the point that Hoover's policies were really in the progressive tradition similar in nature to Teddy Roosevelt's. He believed strongly in the power of efficiency and modernization and did a great deal to help America's transition as the U.S. became a global power. That said, Hoover had a strong distaste of foreign entanglements and a distrust of bureaucracy. As such, he was deeply at odds with the massive expansion of the federal government under the New Deal and the similar expansion that occurred in foreign policy following the Second World War as the U.S. assumed de facto control of many of the pieces of the French and British empires.

The main failing of Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive was its readability (or lack thereof). It veered far too frequently into the details of political movements and public policy theory to be particularly readable. I think this is a shame. While I agree with Wilson that Hoover shared many of the progressive views of Teddy Roosevelt and that the point is worth making, I was hoping for a more gripping narrative of Hoover's career. This just wasn't that book.

To me, Hoover's career deserves a more Shakespearean treatment - a self made man who brings himself up from nothing to reach extraordinary wealth who walks away from the industrial titan model to devote himself to public service who then remakes America for a modern era only to be overwhelmed by events and be left brooding as the country is remade again following World War II. I think a lot more could be done with this story.

>202 Oberon: Great review

>202 Oberon: Hoover is an interesting fellow, and I couldn't agree with you more that his life is deserving of another look. He was the head of the government's Food Administration during WWI; he had a White House Conference on Child Health and Protection during his administration. On committees such as those, he surrounded himself with interesting women--like Rose Wilder Lane and Gertrude Battles Lane (no relation). GBL (1874-1941) was the editor of the Women's Home Companion and also vice president and director of the Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. RWL's papers are archived at the Hoover Presidential Library. I think some of GBL's letters, etc. are there as well.

One of my favorite books about Rose Wilder Lane (the daughter of children's book writer Laura Ingalls Wilder) is Dorothy Thompson & Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship, 1921-1960.

I just finished Love, Hope, Optimism which is subtitled *An informal portrait of Jack Layton by those who knew him*. I am not sure if this strictly classifies as a biography but I will count it as such. Layton was a Canadian politician whose star was rising in 2011 when, just a few short months after winning a major political victory, he was cut down by cancer. He was only 61 and it was such a huge loss for Canada. My full review is on the touchstone link.

>203 karspeak: Thanks!

>204 labwriter: I didn't realize that Rose Wilder Lane's papers were at the library too. Hoover's accomplishment's pre-presidency were extraordinary. In some ways, it is a shame he became president only to see his reputation destroyed by the Great Depression.

Last night I finally finished The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan by Rafia Zakaria. It's a memoir of sorts about the author's family, and her Aunt Amina in particular. The author's father was born in Bombay just before Partition. His family immigrated to Pakistan when he was a teenager and settled in Karachi. When his sister, Amina, remained childless for a few years after her marriage, her husband decided to take a second wife. This is permitted by Islamic law, but it wasn't common for this to happen. The family memoir alternates with a history of Pakistan, with a particular focus on Benazir Bhutto. It's an interesting book, but I was bothered by the fact that the author describes other people's thoughts and feelings without revealing to readers how she knew what they were thinking and feeling. Did they tell her at the time, did she interview them before writing this book, or did she draw inferences and conclusions from what she saw and heard?

>207 cbl_tn: I read The Upstairs Wife last year, and it disappointed me. I didn't feel I got what the title seemed to promise. I actually think a novelist might have done a better job with this story.

>208 laytonwoman3rd: Yes, and I wouldn't have been asking myself "how did she know this" if the characters were fictional but based on the author's family.

>202 Oberon: Erik, I don't know if you'll ever be back this way but if you find yourself in or around West Branch again, please holler. Believe it or not, there are 2 members of the 75-book challenge who live in this tiny town of 2,000!

I appreciate your review of that book, and share your disappointment that the writing doesn't live up to the subject matter.

I'm new to this thread and to LibraryThing, so just getting the hang of how it all works. This will be my first foray into a reading challenge..please let me know if I"m not getting it right. My choice for January is Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. I bought it a few weeks ago while browsing, only to find an untouched copy of my shelves at home a few weeks later. So clearly it's been on my TBR list for a while! I've read a fair amount on WWII (mysteries, holocaust novels, some history) but realized that WWI is something I know much less about. So this is a start..

Technical questions (if it's OK to ask them here); Do I create the hyperlink for my book choice? And should I be doing something with Touchstones?

Looking forward to following this discussion!

>211 gretuccia: Welcome to LibraryThing and to the challenge, gretuccia! Your book choice sounds really interesting. I am usually very good about not buying books twice but I did the same thing a few weeks ago. I guess it's confirmation that my taste in books hasn't changed, or something like that.

Touchstones are the way to create the hyperlink in your posts to books or to authors. Single square brackets around titles, double square brackets around authors. Sometimes, especially with titles, you'll find that the book that gets linked isn't there right one (you'll see it listed just to the right of your post-in-progress). If that happens, click the "others" link and you'll get a longer list of possible matches from which you can (hopefully) find the right one.

I am enjoying reading all the commentary about H is for Hawk, which I am currently listening to on audio when I go out on walks. It is rare for me listen to audio books, as I never quite feel as if I have actually "read" the book. However, MacDonald is doing a wonderful job of narrating her own book, and lI believe it ends something to the reader to hear the author's story in her own voice.

>211 gretuccia: Hi Gretuccia, and welcome to LibraryThing! I loved Testament of Youth - if I had to do a top 5 biographies list it would be near the top. I hope you have tissues handy because in places, not surprisingly, it is very sad.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang, narrated by Joy Osmanski

This contains (nonfiction) spoilers.

Wild Swans is the memior of Jung Chang's childhood in China during the Cultural Revolution, but it's not only about her. She begins with the story of her grandmother.

Jung Chang's grandmother was a concubine to a warlord. She had to use charm and wit to keep herself safe from being held prisoner by the warlord's family - as she was considered the property of the warlord and of his legitimate wives. Upon her warlord's death, she made the very difficult decision to marry, which caused many problems for her, her new husband, and potentially her afterlife (in which her husband and warlord would cut her in half to share her). This story delves into great detail about the strife that Jung Chang's grandmother had to overcome. Now that I'm familiar with how foot binding works I will shudder every time I hear mention of it. I never realized....

The next section of the book is about Jung Chang's mother, who grew up mainly during the strife between her mother and her stepfather's family. WWII was also raging, which meant occupation and brutalization by the Japanese. (This was the most difficult section for me to read.) Once the Japanese occupation ended, their country was ruled by tyranny, thus bringing on the communist uprising. Jung Chang's mother became deeply involved in the Communist Party while very young, but felt betrayed by The Party by the time she was pregnant with her first child.

The final section talks about Jung Chang's childhood, watching the Communist Party emotionally and physically torture those around her, including her parents. She vividly portrays the original innocence that she had - believing in the communist party and Mao's propaganda. Slowly, gently, she began to emerge from this innocence. More gracefully than would be expected, given what was going on around her. That speaks to the power of Mao's campaign.

This was a fascinating and beautifully written book. It's written lovingly, yet it's brutally honest. The research is so amazing that every once in a while I wondered "how does she know that?" Her years' worth of research definitely paid off. This book deserves the fantastic worldwide sales that it has received. I am tempted to read Jung Chang's biography of Mao pretty soon.

>211 gretuccia: Welcome to both LT and the challenge!! Touchstones are just a way for other members to find the book that you're reading/talking about more readily, if they want more information themselves. Put one single square bracket on each side of the title, and that should be it: Testament of Youth. It should appear to the right of your text in the post. If the wrong book appears, there will be a link ("others") beside it. Click on that, and scroll down until you find the correct book; click on that title, and bingo, you've done all you need to do.

A great choice, and I found the recent movie terribly sad and poignant as well; it captured the essential nature of the story (even if some details were made more dramatic for the sake of the film...)

I read The Wind in the Reeds by Wendell Pierce which I think qualifies for this challenge. It's a memoir about his life, his family, and his relationship to New Orleans.

I just finished The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport, reviewed on my thread. It was an excellent look at the lives of the last tsar of Russia and his family, written almost exclusively from diaries, journals, archival documents and personal letters and correspondence. Very well researched and very well-written

>210 rosalita: I would not have guessed! I was passing through from a trial in the quad cities but I will keep that in mind. I do have a soccer tournament coming up in Cedar Rapids.

Its not biography but it is non-fiction - I finished reading Crete by Barry Unsworth for the British Author Challenge 2016. I chose this book for the BAC because I am trying to read titles I already have at home and I want to reduce the stack of books I have checked out from the library. This title checked off all the above points.

This long travel essay is part of the National Geographic Society Directions series that I really like. I like them so well that I want to read all the titles that are available in this series ... eventually. This series is travel books written by well known authors who either live or have done extensive research in various places around the world. Unsworth has written several novels set in the ancient and modern Hellenistic world and spoke Greek well enough to get around in the area. He was a logical person to write about Crete.

This book is a long essay at 170 pages and, unlike others in this series, did not inspire me to want to travel to Crete. In fact, it did the opposite, as Unsworth wrote extensively in it about the overcrowded and over-built tourist spots and the poor state of the rest of the country. He did love all of the walking and hiking opportunities that the island presented and wrote about the role that the various conquerors of the island had in its history, but overall it did not seem to me to be an inspiring kind of writing.

I also noticed that Unsworth uses a unique sentence structure in this book. He writes, in what I call Yoda speak. He puts what most people would consider the ending clause of the sentence at the beginning. This results in a unique style but it also interrupts the flow of the prose. At first it was jarring and I thought that it was the result of poor editing, but since it was a pattern that repeated throughout the book it became apparent that it was not an editing problem. I will have to read the other two titles I have by him that are in my collection to find out for sure if that is his normal writing style or if it is something that he did only in this book.

I started my biography last night. It is Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson. It is a biography of Louise May Alcott and her father Bronson Alcott and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography back in 2008.

Am an hour into the H is for Hawk audiobook and finding it brilliant!

I just finished A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl. It was an interesting memoir written by the wife of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journalist employee who was kidnapped and eventually killed in Pakistan soon after the 9/11 terrorist attack. Mrs. Pearl, a journalist herself, does an excellent job of giving background, detailing activities after the kidnapping, and her life once his death was confirmed. Throughout the story, I could feel the love they shared and I am convinced that the world lost a wonderful man.

I finished Catherine the Great. Here is an excerpt from the Amazon.com Editorial Review: Once upon a time, there was a minor German princess named Sophia. In 1744, at the age of 14, she was taken by her ambitious mother--removed from her family, her religion, and her country--to a foreign land with a single goal: marry a prince and bear him an heir. Once in Russia, she changed her name, learned the language, and went on to become the world's richest and most powerful woman, ruler of its then-largest empire. She is remembered as Catherine the Great.

I really enjoyed learning about Catherine the Great, who was a truly amazing woman. I knew hardly anything about her going into the book, which made it more interesting, of course. The author has written several other books on Russian history, including Peter the Great: His Life and World, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981. I thought Catherine the Great was excellent, because of the fascinating content, but I thought the writing could have been a tad better. It was very interesting and quite readable, which is an impressive accomplishment for Massie, but it did seem a bit belabored at times. Recommended.

>224 karspeak: Thanks for posting about the Robert Massie book, Catherine the Great. I'm putting that one on my list. I read his Nicholas and Alexandra (published in 1969) years ago. Massie certainly has staying power (what is he now, about 85?).

>223 LoisB: Another one I would like to read--the memoir written by Danny Pearl's wife.

>211 gretuccia: Welcome to the group and to LT, gretuccia.

I don't know why I'm having so much trouble with a book that I like a whole lot. Maybe it's because my reading has pretty much been put on the back burner--never thought I would say that! I'm reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599 by James Shapiro. I started listening to the audiobook until I found out it was abridged. So I switched to a paperback copy, and the print is so small I can barely make it out. {{Sigh}} So I've decided to go back to the audio, read by Shapiro himself, because I was really enjoying it despite that dirty A-word.

Shapiro's take on Shakespeare at the end of the 1500's is that he was at something of a professional crossroads. He had been writing comedies for the actor Will Kemp but was evidently restless, feeling his writing was becoming somewhat formulaic and feeling he was experiencing a "creative hiatus" (having just written the two parts of Henry IV and Much Ado About Nothing). Let that one sink in--ha.

Since I'm now listening to Shapiro's book again, I needed another book to read at night. I picked up a memoir that I started a couple of years ago but had to put down for some reason or other which had nothing to do with liking or not liking the book. Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History is Ted Sorensen's 2008 memoir (he died in 2010) of his life with JFK, working as his special counsel, advisor, and speechwriter. The book takes me back to a better time in politics.

Currently reading Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
I've always loved and admired this guy and the work he has tirelessly done for his foundation to promote research work for Parkinson's disease. This book was published in 2009, not that long ago. But I found it so interesting that at one point, when he was discussing the time he was considering the political arena to advocate for stem-cell research, his colleagues showed him an article that had a list of the country's top 5 most trustworthy people. Fox came in at number 4, after Tom Hanks, Oprah, Bill Cosby (!) and ahead of Michael Jordan. Earlier, he also talked about some of his friends and inspiration, including Lance Armstrong (!), Robin Williams, Christopher and Dana Reeve, among others. This isn't a book of name-dropping - he isn't that kind of person - but in just 6+ short years, it boggles the mind how the fates of those mentioned, have turned out. I wonder what Michael Fox thinks and feels about those now. The tragic deaths of Williams and the Reeves have to hurt, for sure, but the self-inflicted fate of Cosby and Armstrong, wow. Anyhow, I am past the half way mark and hope to finish today or tomorrow.

>225 labwriter: I am also reading Shapiro's book on Shakespeare. At about 100 pages in, it is feeling more like a book on history than a biography, and while interesting is not compelling. I find myself wanting to know more about WS himself and perhaps should have started with a biography of the man rather than an in-depth look at the year 1599. I'll be following your comments to see how your reading experience is unfolding.

Thanks for this challenge Suzanne and since I try to read at least one NF book every month anyway I'll try to mesh some of my reads with the schedule you created. I know I'll be reading King Leopold's Ghost next month because of all the recommendations and the fact that it's been languishing on my shelf forever it seems. I'd like to think I can get to The Bolter this month, another book that's been languishing, but a bunch of library books just came in for me so I may end up reading it next month also.. Again, thanks for this as it seems like a challenge that won't overwhelm me, as so many others have seemed to in the past:-)

Changed by Chance was an excellent memoir that I received as a Christmas present from my niece. The author, Elizabeth Barker describes a 5 year period in her life when she suffered more than her share of tragic events. From the birth of a child with special needs and serious medical issues and frustrating battles with insurance companies through her recovery from breast cancer, Ms. Barker is strong, courageous, and determined to do "whatever it takes". This is a gripping story of hope and perseverance.

>223 LoisB: The world did lose a wonderful guy with Danny's death; he was a colleague and friend, and those of us lucky to know him still can't believe he was lost in this manner. Of all the people we knew, he was the kind of guy who would most have sought to understand the people who held him captive, in a genuine and thoughtful manner -- that's the cruelest irony. Others here have read Asra Nomani's book, Standing Alone; Asra was one of Danny's two closest friends at the WSJ, and after his death spearheaded a massive investigative reporting project aimed at finding the culprits and the reason for his death: http://pearlproject.georgetown.edu/. It's worth a read.

>228 brenzi: So glad you'll join the challenge, Bonnie! I may read Hochschild's upcoming book about the Spanish civil war for February. I'll post the February page by the weekend, I hope.

I just bought a new bio today, though I doubt I'l get it read this month. It's An Illuminated Life, about Belle da Costa Greene, who became the curator of JP Morgan's amazing collection of antiquarian manuscripts and books in the Edwardian era; I keep hearing little tidbits about her, and my bf and I were visiting the Morgan library today when I suddenly decided I had to check in the gift shop to see if I could find something about her in the gift shop. Success!

Meanwhile, I have started reading the dual bio of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Godwin Shelley, Romantic Outlaws.

>230 Chatterbox: Thanks for the link to The Pearl Project.

>227 brenpike: Hi Brenda. Hooray. Finished the Shapiro Shakespeare. I normally hate abridged editions of anything, and I didn't realize I was buying the abridged edition when I got the audible version of Shapiro's book on Shakespeare's Year. I abandoned it and then went back to it when I found the print on the paperback edition was too small for me to read late at night, which is when I do most of my reading. I agree with you, Brenda. I probably read almost 100 pages of the paperback edition, and it was very heavy on the history. Maybe that's the "why" of the abridged audio edition, because the parts that were left in were the parts you said you wanted more of--about Shakespeare and the plays he wrote in 1599. I guess that's a long way of saying that you might like the audio version better. I belong to Audible.com, so I can get them at a fairly reasonable price. I also once belonged to a library that had lots of audio books. The library in my new town--not.

Frankly, if I had it to do over again, I would just put the darned thing on my Kindle and be done with it. Maybe I'll do that anyway--ending up with 3 versions of the same book. Ack.

Anywho, I'll just say that I enjoyed Shapiro's approach in A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599. I like putting literature in the context of the time it was written; Shapiro points out that the way the plays are normally grouped--Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies--doesn't give us a sense of how Shakespeare worked on these plays, what was influencing him at the time, etc. Just before, during, and just after 1599, he wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. It was obviously a momentous year for him. Why that year? Shapiro tells us everything we might want to know about that (in the unabridged edition, of course). He also adds a 41-page bibliographical essay--which is worth the price of the book for anyone who wants to delve into Shakespeare studies.

I'd give it 4.5 stars for being a well-researched, compelling read. One-half star off because of the abridgement issue--which I guess is really my own fault, since Audible clearly indicates when an edition is abridged. Oh well. Based on this book, I would definitely read Shapiro's The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.

P.S. If you get the audible edition, the reader is James Shapiro himself. I thought his reading added a lot to the text.

P.P.S. Oh for heaven's sake, the Kindle edition is $5.99. So I grabbed it.

>228 brenzi: and >230 Chatterbox: I thought that King Leopold's Ghost was a really good book. I am also thinking about To End All Wars for February. It's between that and Embracing Defeat

>232 banjo123: Either of those look as if they'd be fascinating. A former grad school professor of mine wrote a book about the topic in the latter, Occupation Diplomacy, so I might take a gander at Embracing Defeat; I know a fair amount about that era as I wrote my BA thesis about postwar Japanese defense policy. (Nope, NOT an oxymoron!)

I'll try and have the February thread up on Saturday for folks who want to get a jump on their planning.

I may have missed it upthread but is there a theme for February - or is it still biography?

>234 benitastrnad: In the first post it lists the themes for each month.

>234 benitastrnad: The theme for February will be history. That said, this thread will stay alive as long as people wish to keep reading and talking about their biographies, and many of those biographies may be historical in nature, so there could be some overlap. I could see the one I'm reading now (the dual bio of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley) being a history book in Feb, for instance.

Finished H is for Hawk this evening. Wonderful. Wonderful. If I find the brain power to write anything more enlightening about it as far as review-type stuff goes, I'll be sure to post a link here.

>230 Chatterbox: Ha! I just read something about Romantic Outlaws. Looking forward to getting it from the library when I've finished the Claire Tomalin one.

I'm glad to hear that the bio thread will still be open in February - I'm ploughing through Gandhi before India. It's fascinating, but a tiny font and stacks of detail mean it's not a quick read. He seems to have led several lives before he even took up protest in India itself, which makes for a varied international setting from the London law courts to a South African battlefield.

I read one memoir and one biography in January. The memoir A Tender Struggle: Story of a Marriage was OK. It's the story of the young, modern woman who fell in love and married an older Muslum man. Some of the cultural discussions (Christmas or Ramedam) but overall it was a little sweet and predictable.
Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis was pretty close to a 5 star read for me. Joy was a very interesting person, although not particularly likeable, even after her surprising experience of grace and conversion to Christianity. I thinking that she is much like me and most other Christians - livedby God the way we are now. I also think I am fortunate that no one will research my life and post my limitations for all to see.

For February and history I want to read The Warmth of other Suns. I thought I had it in my library but I can't find it so it will be coming from the library soon. I will need to finish in three weeks - well into February.

I tead Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals the other day and quite enjoyed it. I think I'll be picking up some of Durell's other books a later date.

>240 hazel1123: The Warmth of Other Suns is a great choice.

>241 amanda4242: Excellent! The Durrell books would be a great fit for natural history in June, if you wanted to/ended up waiting that long.

>239 hazel1123: Joy Gresham is an intriguing figure; I think I read something about that bio in a big literary blog recently. Blocked on the name of it, though the comments were excellent. If I remember, I'll come back and post a link.

The February History thread is now live, for those advance planners among you who are eager to get organized and want to see what others hope to read. Drop by if you want to do so, but don't feel under any pressure to do so, whether now or in February (though obviously it would be great to see as many motivated people participate then!)

>231 labwriter: Thanks for the update Becky. And congratulations on your third copy of Shapiro's book :) I took a couple of days off from this read and will get back to it tomorrow. Hopefully a fresh approach will help me regain interest in the events of 1599! Like you, I like knowing what was happening in Shakespeare's world when he wrote his plays. Putting music, books, art, plays, etc. into context adds to my understanding and appreciation of a work and enhances the experience.

So many great books getting attention here - To End All Wars, King Leopold's Ghost, The Warmth of Other Suns, My Family and Other Animals - all great books, some of my favorites. The Non-Fiction Challenge thread is becoming one I most look forward to checking out. Thanks Suzanne!

I just finished Always Looking Up and really enjoyed it. Michael J. Fox is a man of great integrity, grace and humility. And optimism and humour. I wrote a full review on my own thread, but this was a good one.

I'm late to 'get on the bus', so won't finish this by the end of Jan, but will read West with the Night by Beryl Markham. I received this book for Christmas 2014 from my Virago Modern Classics Secret Santa

I finished a second biography, one that's been on my tbr pile for a while. Terry Pratchett: The Spirit of Fantasy by Craig Cabell is not so much a biography of Pratchett's life but a biography of his writing development, especially in terms of themes and imagination, and how his diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2007 led to strong activism both for research on the disease and for assisted-death legislation as well as stimulating themes in his writing. Cabell is a journalist who apparently makes a living writing about authors. I don't know that I got any great insights into either Sir Pterry or his writing, but Cabell does include an exhaustive bibliography of book editions (British) and movies at the end.

>248 ronincats:
oh, oh, BOOK BULLET!
Have to put Terry Pratchett: The Spirit of Fantasy by Craig Cabell on my wishlist. Don't know Pratcett's writing but the biography sounds really interesting to me!

I have a couple of Pratchett's books on my Kindle so will have to read one before I read the biography.

I'm reading a memoir as we finish out January here. The book is Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, by Ted Sorensen. For those who weren't alive then and/or aren't political junkies, Sorensen was one of JFK's closest advisors and also speechwriter. So far I'm finding it well-written and interesting, as far as political memoirs go.

I have a good start on Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson. This title won a Pultizer Prize and I have had it on my shelves for some time. It is the March selection for my real life book discussion group. But it fits in nicely here.

I'm currently reading Nobody Knows by Craig von Buseck, a biography of African-American musical pioneer Harry T. Burleigh. I'm interested in the information, but the writing style/format is driving me crazy.

I guess Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean, could relate to this thread, as it has a lot of biographical information about Henry Flagler -- though it's really focused largely on the railroad he built to Key West.

>252 tymfos: Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Oceanwould actually be good for February as it has a lot of Florida history in it.

>253 LoisB: True! I enjoyed it, and maybe somebody here would like to try it next month.

But as for me, I read it this month, while we were visiting Florida. I read a lot of history, anyway. February will be easy for me! Lots to choose from on my TBR shelf.

>254 tymfos: I enjoyed it too. although I live in Florida, I'm a transplant. I read it just before a trip to Key West.

Key West is amazing! We've driven the whole way out and stayed there overnight in some past years. Such a beautiful drive! We didn't make it out that far this time -- only to Key Largo, and Islamorada. I read Hemingway's Hurricane the first time we visited Key West. That's a good one! That one focuses on the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 in much more detail (and is much more critical of the way the veterans work crews were handled).

>250 labwriter: This is the book in which Sorensen revealed that he drafted most of Profiles in Courage, for which JFK won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize winner. I guess he did more than draft it.

>257 weird_O: Hi Bill. I guess Sorensen knew this book would be his last chance to reveal things that he had previously kept to himself, so I'm hoping he lets it rip.

I'm reading a dual biography now -Wanted Women by Deborah Scroggins which is about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui. I didn't plan to read it now - it just happened to be the next book on my library list, but that's kind of serendipitous, I think. Plus, it's very good, and I think I will probably get it finished this month.

And now I get to find a history that will fit February. Yay!

>259 Fourpawz2: Excellent! I thought that was a very good bio, and made for an interesting contrast.

I'm reading a dual bio here, too -- Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon, which looks at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her daughter, Mary Godwin Shelly. The elder Mary lived only ten days after giving birth to her daughter, but shaped her life (being the daughter of two radical intellectuals made Mary precocious and admired) and her thinking. I'm finding more revelations about the elder Mary, however, with whose life I was much less familiar, and find her fascinating. It's excellent.

I may try to squeeze in, or at least start, a new bio of Vladimir Putin when I get home to Providence (where the book is now, and where I am not...)

And I'm lining up my February history reads!

I've finished Romantic Outlaws, and it's probably the best book I've read so far this year. This was an absolutely fascinating and brilliantly constructed dual biography of a mother and daughter. The mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women and many more works of political philosophy, a major thinker of the late Enlightenment. She outlived her daughter, Mary Godwin Shelley, by only ten days, but as the author shows, that didn't prevent her from having an outsize impact on that daughter's life and thinking. Gordon chooses to alternate chapters, leading to some eerie and interesting parallels, such as juxtapositions between those in which she chronicles how William Godwin mourned his wife, Wollstonecraft, and how Mary Shelley coped with the loss of Percy Bysshe Shelley (and how both treated their respective obligations to preserve their spouses' literary legacies). Loss is one common element -- the loss of love in Wollstonecraft's case; in Mary's case, the death of three of her children as infants, and that of her elder sister to suicide. So, too, is depression, to which both mother and daughter seem to have been vulnerable. A brilliant dual biography, and very insightful and analytical. I valued it, in particular, for what I learned about Wollstonecaft, and will try to add something by her to my reading this year. (Meanwhile, will try to read the Virginia Woolf essay about her soon...) I'm rating it a full five stars.

I was going to read H is for Hawk but picked up and started The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books by John Carey.

I am starting to line up some books for the February theme of History. I like that history can cover a lot of territory; at least, I interpret it to be history in time, history of a place, or even history of a thing. I have a few books to fit in all those categories. Here are the first 4 I think I will choose:

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (I read another book of his, The Victorian Internet and really enjoyed that one so I am hopeful that his fine writing will carry on in this one).

Capturing the Light subtitled: The Birth of Photography, A True Story of Genius and Rivalry, by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport. I just finished another outstanding book by Rappaport this month, The Romanov Sisters so I was delighted when I realized that this one is coauthored by her, too.

The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin. Subtitled J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. On the back it is dubbed part biography, part music history, part literary mystery, and it is the winner of 5 Canadian literary awards. I lent it to a friend who is a musician and she loved it.

I have had Between Silk and Cyanide - A Codemaker's War 1941 - 1945, by Leo Marks (of Marks and Spencer fame) on my shelf for years. I think now is a good time for this one too.

I have quite a few other history books but I think I will start with four and see how far into February they take me.

>263 jessibud2: Do, please, post this list in the history/February thread as well, which is already up and running, if you don't mind? Love the Leo Marks book -- it was v. good. You know he was associated with the Marks & Co. booksellers, of Helene Hanff fame, as in 84 Charing Cross Road?? (I LOVED The Cello Suites, btw...)

>264 Chatterbox: - Done, thanks! And yes, I know about that connection, and have read most of Hanff's books, as well.

I finished Wanted Women last evening while keeping an eye on the NFC championship game. I really liked this book. Scroggins has done a really good job with this dual biography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali - hater of Islam, former Dutch MP and AEI fellow - and Aafia Siddiqui - convicted al Qaeda facilitator and hater of everything that is not in line with fundamental Islamism. Two very scary women.

I read Infidel some years ago and checking back on what I wrote at the time I found that I used the word 'interesting' a lot and in a way which leads me to think that I was not quite sure what, exactly, I thought of Ayaan Hirsi Ali back then. Things are clearer to me now.

>266 Fourpawz2: Good analysis... This book helped me, too, clarify what niggled at me about Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a time when everyone was lionizing her. It's helping me keep my perspective now, with her new book out and everyone again pointing to her as a bastion of liberalism. Well, yes, but of a different kind of liberalism: she has adopted European mores wholesale, rejected everything about her faith (not just her own upbringing, but every possible expression or variation of it) wholesale as essentially having no value, and is applauded by many BECAUSE she does this. If she were more nuanced, she wouldn't get the audience she does, I suspect. (Or even if she weren't as young and gorgeous, perhaps??) I'm not dismissive of her personal experiences in her youth, but I'd rather look at Asra's critiques, which come from within Islam and yet are aimed at reforming it. The one thing about where Asra is heading right now is that she is ending up in close company with Hirsi Ali, even though they are odd companions, given the latter's politics. (She's cozy with the Ayn Rand Republicans, for instance.) I admire Hirsi Ali's intellect and her ability to reinvent herself so many times but have tremendous reservations about what that has meant for the debate for mutual understanding between the West and Islam.

>11 kidzdoc: I don't yet know "who" Karl Ove Knausgaard is, but because I've seen the book cover for the one you're reading every time I come to the thread I recognized his name as I was flipping through the Wall Street Journal Magazine. He's pictured with Zadie Smith at the Innovator Awards in New York 11.4.15.

>261 Chatterbox: Did you listen to the audiobook by any chance Suz? I see Susan Lyons narrates, and I quite like her from what I'm hearing on the Audible sample.

My reads for January:

Memoir:
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman, 4 stars
This lady sure has a way with words. Memoir/essays on her reading and book life.

Biography:
A Disposition to be Rich: how a small-town pastor's son ruined an American president, brought on a Wall Street crash, and made himself the best-hated man in the United States, Geoffrey C. Ward, 3.5 stars
The title is a great summary of this book. The swindler was Ferdinand Ward. The president swindled was Ulysses S. Grant. The crash came in 1884. Son of poor missionaries, Ward cared for nothing but money and lying was his method to obtain it. His plan was to marry a rich woman and use her money to further his schemes. Time and again he was found out before it was too late for the lady. Finally, it worked on one family; they married, to her family’s eternal regret. Shortly thereafter, her father died, and Ward got his hands on his wife’s portion of the inheritance and then his mother-in-law’s portion. With the help of a willing (at first) and then ignorant bank president, his little investment company made large profits for their investors. However, there were no investments. It was a Ponzi scheme to rake in more gullible investors. Finally, his bad checks brought down the bank, the banker, his own firm, and all the people who hadn’t gotten out in time, including Grant. As he admitted in his trial, he was robbing Peter to pay Paul. He got his wife to give him her family jewels in order to live a cushy life while in prison. When she died she left the dregs of her estate which hadn’t already been plundered to their son in trust. When he got out, he kidnapped his own son for the trust money. Ward was a despicable narcissist, ruining every life he touched. The author is Ward’s great-grandson. He worked from letters and court transcripts and did a remarkable job of painting his forbear’s character with his own words.

>269 Smiler69: Nope, this was an e-book for me, Ilana.

I love this challenge and am lining up books from my shelves that go with the monthly themes. Thanks, Suzanne--great idea!

January's theme seems tailor-made for my presidential biographies project (presidents in chronological order), which I made very little progress on in 2015, reading only 2 1/2 books. I just finished John Tyler by Gary May which I've been reading off and on for many months (ridiculous for a book with fewer than 200 pages), and I have Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America in the audiobook queue.

Next up is Between the World and Me which I bought for myself for Thingaversary and also received as a Christmas present from my husband who has no idea how to figure out what books I own. Also Fun Home, Teacher Man, Testament of Youth, and Howard’s End is on the Landing fit into this category. Not to mention all the suggestions gleaned from this thread. I may have to continue on into February.

As for John Tyler, "the Accidental President," I learned a few things about a president who is commonly ranked as one of the most obscure:

Tyler set the precedent for what happens when a sitting president dies in office, long before the 25th Amendment codified the process in 1967. At the time, it was by no means clear.
Tyler had found himself at odds with Andrew Jackson over a range of issues, and joined the Whig ticket as vice-President largely on the strength of his anti-Jackson sentiments. However, this was about the only idea he shared with the Whigs, and once President, he opposed Whig plans for a national bank and other core policy priorities. Most of his Cabinet members soon resigned, and for the remainder of his term he was known as “the man without a party.”

Although he had objected to what he saw as abuse of executive power by President Jackson, he himself used the veto more often than any previous president and had a clear vision of presidential authority versus that of Congress. He was the first president against whom impeachment proceedings were initiated.

Tyler had significant foreign policy accomplishments, including settling the border between Maine and Canada thereby improving relations with Great Britain, and devoted much of his term to the annexation of Texas.

Tyler saw himself as coming from the line of of Virginia statesmen who had gone before him. He was on the wrong side of the slavery question, as were his Virginia forefathers, but in the decades leading up to the Civil War the issue could no longer be dodged. Tyler has been dubbed “the traitor president” on account of his later service to the Confederacy, and is the only president whose death (in 1862) was not marked in Washington.

The Gary May biography is part of the American Presidents series, a relatively short work but that was fine by me.

I finished the 1929 version of Robert Graves' excellent Good-Bye to All That last night. At times humorous, but mostly ironic and more than a little angry.

>273 amanda4242: What a great read, Amanda -- I need to get to that one day... I adore his poetry.

I finished Without You There Is No Us, a memoir of teaching in North Korea. It was absolutely wonderful - hard to put down. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest this regime.

>275 streamsong: I read that one a while ago, as an ER selection. Almost impossible to imagine the disconnect with the outside world that persists in North Korea in this day and age.

I am grateful for this challenge as Rebel Yell with its thick spine might have languished on the shelf. It was a wonderful read. S. C. Gwynne has a knack for writing history: short chapters helped, I think, but also just a way of getting to the heart of the story. This is history and biography for non-historians with carefully chosen details that provide insight into both the fascinating life of Stonewall Jackson as well as the lives of others and the world in which they lived.

I wrote a longer review on my main thread.

I finished a third book for this challenge: Liar: A Memoir

This was a gripping book, dealing with issues of alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness in a stark, direct manner. No sugar-coating here. The author jumps back and forth in time, randomly. Normally, this would ruin the book for me, but once I realized he was trying to simulate the manic mind, I felt it added to the story. I would highly recommend this book, with the caveat that the reader is prepared for the depressing topics. I received this book from the LT Early Reviewers program.

Glad folks have had so much fun with this challenge! I'm going to pick up the Putin biography over the weekend, and probably will keep reading into early February, so if you're still reading biographies, you'll have company!

I find history fascinating so naturally the biography I chose was about an historical figure. Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson is the bio of Cissy Patterson who became the editor of the Washington Times-Herald in a time that very few women had careers. They were supposed to get married, have children and take care of the home (or run the household staff if you were in the elite as Cissy was).

This was not only the biography of a dynamic and conflicted person but also a great history of the eras which Cissy lived through. It also gives an insight into the dynamics of the Medhill family, a strange and wealthy publishing family.

>202 Oberon: I didn't know all that about Hoover. He sounds like an interesting person with a lot more behind him than being one of the presidents. I was struck by his view point on foreign entanglements as it was similar to the various editors with connections to the Medhill family in the Newspaper Titan. The editors were vocal (if you can say that about the printed word) about their isolationist viewpoints and there is one point in the narrative where Cissy, the editor of the Washington Times-Herald, suspects FDR of manipulating the Japanese into the bombing of Pearl Harbour which helped precipitate the US into WWII.

>281 Familyhistorian: I can't say that Hoover claimed that FDR deliberately provoked the Japanese but it was pretty clear that he thought the U.S. was being provocative towards Japan. Despite all of his time overseas and his humanitarian work, Hoover idealized a very isolationist policy believing that the U.S. should endeavor to be economically self-sufficient so as to allow the country to avoid conflicts like the Second World War - the Fortress America idea.

Newspaper Titan sounds very interesting. I will have to look for it.

>282 Oberon: Hoover probably didn't but Cissy Patterson did because she was an outspoken critic of FDR. The book also hints that FDR manipulated the isolationist press particularly the Medhill papers. Interesting stuff.

I've decided to read one more book in this category this month, Stokely: A Life by Peniel E. Joseph, a biography of the late civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael. I should be able to finish it by Sunday.

I will also be finishing one more this month: How Can I Keep From Singing?, a bio of Pete Seeger. I have about 40 pages left and should easily be able to finish it before Sunday. I will add my review then but so far, I am enjoying it. I actually started it last summer but put it down for awhile because, although it is a soft cover, it is somewhat oversized and weighs a bloody ton, making it difficult to carry around in my purse, and almost dangerous to read in bed (if it drops on your face if you doze....!)

I've started the audio of The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age but I'm sure I won't finish it tomorrow. Happily, it fits February's history theme so I'll comment on it there when I've finished it.

>276 laytonwoman3rd: *Blush* It's an ER book for me, too, I'm just horribly behind with reading and reviewing them.

You are very right about North Korea's hard to believe disconnect - truly scary. DD was studying in China and doing some tutoring there at the same time the author of this book was in North Korea. I thought the censorship DD faced was intimidating but this is definitely 100x worse. As it was, DD had to submit lesson plans to be approved in advance, and she and I were bemused by categories for her US culture talks not approved by the authorities. I remember the thumbs down for her mentioning US minorities (Chinese minorities being a hot-button topic) and US holidays (wouldn't want to sneak any religion in there!)

I just finished When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: a young (my age!) neurosurgeon is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer and quickly goes from doctor to patient; to having a bright future to having none. Haunting, inspirational, and beautifully written, I will read this one again.

Thanks to everyone for posting about these biographies--one of my all-time favorite categories. I keep wishing that LT had a "like" button. I'll be checking back here, because I'm not finished with this category either.

I'm reading a rather short biog called Separate Lives: The Story of Mary Rippon, by Silvia Pettem. I knew the name because when Mr. Lab & I were attending U of Colorado, Boulder back in the early 1970s, we used attend the summer Shakespeare festival held at Mary Rippon (outdoor) Theater. Other than laughing at her name (Rippon as in some version of "ripped"), I don't think any of us had any idea who she was. She was the first female professor at C.U. who, along with other women of her time, had no choice but to go to Germany to study for her PhD.

Mary Rippon's biography is smaller and lighter fare than one of my favorites in the same category, The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas, by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. Thomas was pretty much in all respects a horrible human being, but she was also the President of Bryn Mawr. Horowitz did a great job--very recommended if you're interested in the early years of higher education for women in the U.S.

>289 labwriter: Interesting about Mary Rippon, Becky. I've been to the Shakespeare festival and used to work at U of Colorado, but never knew the history of the name.

Finished another for this category - Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by singer/songwriter Jewel. I'm not sure why I picked this up because celebrity bios are not the sort of thing I usually read. It's long and I kept saying to myself, I'll just read to the end of this section and then put it down, but somehow I read the whole thing. The author grew up on a homestead in Alaska, did two years at a prestigious prep school for the arts, was pulled into a cult-ish setting by her off-again/on-again mother, and was living out of her car and singing in a San Diego coffee house when she was signed for her first recording contract - all before the age of 20. Had one of the best-selling debut albums ever, started a couple of non-profits to give back to others, lost her fortune due to poor management (by her mother), but kept performing and recording all through it. I think what drew me to the story was that it was never about "oh, poor me." Instead, she talked a lot about how she kept herself grounded (journal writing was high on the list, but also personal connections to others in her life including a strong and loyal fan group) and how she eventually came to trust herself rather than being dependent on others for approval. No name-dropping, little social reporting, but included a lot of very interesting information about how the music business works, touring as well as recording.

I finished my final bio for this month: How Can I Keep From Singing: Pete Seeger by David King Dunaway.

I am an admitted *folkie* so I was eager to read this bio of Pete Seeger, one of the original folkies of the last century. But beyond his longevity (he died in 2014 at the age of 94), and some of his songs that formed the soundtrack of my teenage years (Where Have All the Flowers Gone, If I Had a Hammer, his adaptation of the biblical verse to Turn, Turn, Turn, and We Shall Overcome, to name just a few) - beyond this, I knew relatively little about his actual life.

I knew he was an activist for many social issues (anti-war, civil rights, environment, etc,), but I learned so much more from this book. I learned probably more than I wanted to know about the McCarthy era and the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee). He was subpoenaed to testify before them in 1955 and when he refused to answer their questions about his beliefs and affiliations (which violated his First Amendment rights) , he was sentenced to 10 consecutive one-year terms in jail for contempt, which were later overturned. It seems to me, reading this book, that it was insane that such a thing could happen. Seriously, were they really so afraid of Seeger? I knew that anything associated with *Communists* during those post-war years was considered anti-American, but to be able to prosecute and blacklist so many people without any proof seems paranoid to the extreme. He was harassed by the FBI and CIA, who kept files on him for years. Yet, all he wanted to do was sing. The freedom to sing and freedom of speech was his ultimate goal. It seems ludicrous that this was so threatening.

Seeger also seemed to be a man of contradictions, in some ways. He wanted to live his life as a simple man, supporting the underdog. He built his own home, a log cabin, with his own hands, grew his own food. Yet, despite the detractors and the (political) problems that followed him wherever he went, he actually did make money, and he travelled extensively, both alone and with his family. He was not comfortable with the contradiction of having money and often did not want to even know how much he was being paid for his concerts. His wife,Toshi, was his lifelong manager and organizer, so that actually worked to his advantage. He was a man who always marched to his own drummer, followed his own ideals and values, yet he sometimes seemed idealistic to the point of naivete in his belief that a song could change the world.

Seeger most certainly did leave his mark on the music world and the tradition of folk music This biography was extremely well-researched and well-written. It was first published in 1981, and I believe there has been a more updated version published since.

#292
Pete Seeger was indeed an interesting subject for a biography. Why was HUAC so afraid of him? Or any artist for that matter?

I am slowly reading through Eden's Outcasts and learning so much about the transcendentalist movement in the US. Bronson Alcott was a man way ahead of his time and in so many ways one of those scholarly types who gets lost in his research and the world can go to hell around him, but in other ways he was so in tune to the world around him and wanted to make it better. I won't finish this biography any time soon, but I am sure it will fit in with some other category later on.

I'm still reading the Putin bio, The New Tsar, and will keep going into February -- it's very good, well-written and informative, so I don't want to rush it!

Glad this has been such a great start to the non-fiction challenge; thanks, all.

>294 Chatterbox: Ooh - Another non-fiction book bullet.

Just checking in to say that I'm finally reading some in my biography/history/travel chunkster, Travels in West Africa. Mary Kingsley is a charming writer. I won't finish in February though. I've also started Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of the New Yorker, an almost local writer. Of course, I'm enjoying the local stuff, which is as far as I've gotten. I have him at 10 years old, visiting NYC with his father on a business trip; otherwise, it's all about the little town where he grew up.

I'm late posting this, but I also finished The Monks and Me: How 40 Days in Thich Nhat Hanh's French Monastery Guided Me Home by Mary Paterson on Jan 31st. I give it 3 stars, it was good and I enjoyed learning more about Buddhism, but she writes about one lesson she learned at the monastery for each day she was there, and sometimes the lessons felt a little contrived. On to the February history category!

Glad people are still reading their biographies! I'm slowly moving forward with the Putin bio, but have had to read some books for which reviews are due, so...

I've just finished An Unexpected Professor: an Oxford Life in Books by John Carey. I've now got a list of books and poetry that I need to check out, so Carey gave me a mini-education in English Lit as well as an entertaining read.

I've been slow with my January bio, and now I've got another through ILL to read. I decided to read a bio of Karen Carpenter when I saw from a display at the college library that February is Eating Disorders Awareness month.

totally loved it! Yes I'm very delayed in this response. :)

I may not read it, but saw this week that a biography of Leonard Nimoy by William Shatner just came out. That should be interesting!

I never did finish the bio I had picked out for January, though I'm nibbling away at it. But I did finish another, Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt.

It was maddening and sad. Talk about dysfunctional families!

I did finish reading Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt, and I finished it in January. January 24, 2016 to be exact. I just have been dragging out reporting. It was a good book, and won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for biography, as well as a National Book Critics Circle Award. I finished my Weird Book Report, and you can read it here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/210740#5479478