Spitfire Women of World War II by Giles Whittell

Spitfire Women of World War II by Giles Whittell

Completion Date: February 26, 2011
Reason for Reading: Sassymonkey said I would like it, and I trust her!

The story of the unsung heroines who flew the newest, fastest, aeroplanes in World War II -- mostly in southern England where the RAF was desperately short of pilots. Why would the well-bred daughter of a New England factory-owner brave the U-boat blockades of the North Atlantic in the bitter winter of 1941? What made a South African diamond heiress give up her life of house parties and London balls to spend the war in a freezing barracks on the Solent? And why did young Margaret Frost start lying to her father during the Battle of Britain? They -- and scores of other women -- weren't allowed to fly in combat, but what they did was nearly as dangerous. Unarmed and without instruments or radios, they delivered planes for the Air Transport Auxiliary to the RAF bases from which male pilots flew into battle. At the mercy of the weather and any long-range enemy aircraft that pounced on them, fifteen of these women died, among them Amy Johnson, Britain's most famous flyer. But the survivors shared four unrepeatable years of life, adrenaline and love. The story of this 'tough bunch of babes' (in the words of one of them) has never been told properly before. The author has travelled to four continents to interview all the surviving women pilots, who came not just from the shires of England, but also from the U.S.A, Chile, Australia, Poland and Argentina. Paid GBP 6 a week, they flew up to 16 hours a day in 140 different types of aircraft, though most of them liked Spitfires the best.

Jackie Cochrane

I am so happy that I FINALLY read this book! I have to admit I had intended to review it before now when it was still fresh, but inspiration never seemed to strike. It is mainly because I had a problem with my eReader. I loved it when I bought it, but I will never read a non-fiction book on it again. As I am writing my review, I am always flipping around through the book to find little facts and I love an index. This is not something that is as important with fiction books, so I never considered it. The index for this book is really just a list of topics with no page numbers and no way to jump back to where it is discussed. It bothers me immensely, to the point where I am going to be buying a couple books in a bit and I am actually considering buying a paperback copy of this one. I should have in the first place...

Amy Johnson

Now that I have that out of the way, I loved this book. Non-fiction is actually my first love. Specifically Canadian or British history set during the World Wars. Add in a women angle and I am there with bells on! Obviously I read other things, but these are the types of books I will buy with no hesitation. This book also gets points because I actually have always had this quiet little dream of learning how to fly a plane. It probably will never happen because I have a hard enough time driving a car, but it is still there in the back of my mind. To read about these women who had such a chance was fascinating for me! Who knows, if I had lived back then I may have learned. These women may not have been flying in combat, but they were just as at risk. Many of them were improperly trained to fly the planes they were assigned to operate.

Women Pilots

The thing I liked about this book is that the author tried to put a face to every pilot. It could have been overwhelming keeping all the names straight, but I actually found it fascinating. Some of the pilots, like Amy Johnson, received more pages than others, but for the most part she made sure to give a character sketch of all the women. Some were also still alive at the time that this book was written so she could go and visit them and hear their stories firsthand. This story-telling aspect made its way to the pages, so it made the book very readable. World War II opened up many opportunities for women that had not existed before the war, but they still had to fight for every chance. It was a huge deal when they were allowed to fly Spitfires. They had previously been considered too powerful for women, but the rule was loosened a bit.

Dorothy Furey

There was so much to learn by reading this book. I was engrossed from the very beginning. Normally non-fiction books take me a bit longer to read, but this one I found almost a page-turner by the end. When I finished it, I ended up staying up really late to see how everything played out. This is a book I will definitely want to visit with again! The pictures included are just some of the women involved in the book.

Jackie Sorour

Maureen Dunlop

This was a very famous photo

3rd Canadian Reading Challenge: Mini Reviews

In the last few months I have read a lot Canadian book for the 3rd Canadian Reading Challenge. The problem is I apparently still need to review 5 books in order to count it as finished. So, I am going to do some mini-reviews. I think that you will see more of this in the next two months because it seems to be the only way I am ever going to review even a large part of the books I have read this year.

The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong (The Darkest Powers Series, Book 2)
I received a review copy of the first book in this series last year, and while I enjoyed it I didn't love it. This time around I decided to get the book from the library. What happened is I actually really enjoyed it! It really is hard for Kelley Armstrong to write a bad book. She is the author of the Women of the Otherworld series which I love! This series is a young adult one. It is a paranormal novel. My biggest problem with this book and with the book that came before it is the main character. She kind of annoys me, but she grew on me a bit more in this book. The other characters are compelling and I am looking forward to seeing what happens with them in the further books. I think there are some surprises in store as the characters grow into themselves and into their paranormal abilities. A recommended read!

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl by John Colapinto
I spoke about this book a bit in one of my Sunday posts. To go into a bit more detail, I don't think this is what I was expecting. I just wanted to read what it was like for a boy to be raised as a girl. I was interested in that story, but I found all the other stuff that was mixed in got a bit unnecessary. There was one chapter I got annoyed and ended up skimming my way through. I think that the author was trying to accomplish too much in such a short book and it got a bit boggled down. I found parts of it really interesting, but overall I found this rather dull.

War Brides: The stories of the women who left everything behind to follow the men they loved by Melynda Jarratt
This book was actually really interesting! It is the personal story of the women and their family involved in the war bride movement during the second world war. The stories are told in their own words and do not just tell the success stories. Obviously when you only know a man for a short time and marry him you don't necessarily know him at all. It was shocking what these women came to Canada to live in. Many of them were from middle-class homes and they went to places where in some cases there was not even indoor plumbing, so it was a bit overwhelming. I think this is the best way to tell this story and I am glad that I read it. I recommend it!

The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Shore by Robert Finch
I totally read this book because of the title! It was just fun, so I had to see what it was all about. What happened was I read a really interesting book about Newfoundland. I should mention that while Nfld is near to me, I have never actually been there, so whether or not this is an entirely believable portrait is something that people that actually live there would have to tell you. What did happen, though, is I learned a lot without even stepping outside my living room. Plus, I could see a lot of Nova Scotia in it... Did it live up to the title? Maybe not as much as I hoped, but I still really enjoyed it. I recommend it.

The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys
I read Coventry last year and I really liked it. This book was good, but I think it is a bit lost on me... I read a book for the story and am not a huge fan of fancy writing that sort of takes away from the story. This book was a bit flowery and it was not something that worked for me all the time. I entirely acknowledge that it is just me, though. At its core I really liked the story and the characters. I still plan to read more from Humphreys in the future. For whatever bothers me about her books, there is always wonderful things that keep me reading her. So, I guess I recommend this, but then on the other hand I don't. If that makes any sense...

Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble

What really happened to Anastasia Romanov?

Anastasia Romanov thought she would never feel more alone than when the gunfire started and her family began to fall around her. Surely the bullets would come for her next. But they didn't. Instead, two gnarled old hands reached for her. When she wakes up she discovers that she is in the ancient hut of the witch Baba Yaga, and that some things are worse than being dead.

In modern-day Chicago, Anne doesn't know much about Russian history. She is more concerned about getting into a good college—until the dreams start. She is somewhere else. She is someone else. And she is sharing a small room with a very old woman. The vivid dreams startle her, but not until a handsome stranger offers to explain them does she realize her life is going to change forever. She is the only one who can save Anastasia. But, Anastasia is having her own dreams…

From Amazon.ca

I am a book snob. I had no idea what this book was about, but I saw the cover and I had to read it! Isn't the cover fantastic? It's going to look very nice on my shelves when it gets there. I hate judging a book by its cover, but then I was offered an ARC from Sourcebooks and I had to have it! The story helped, though. It's a reimagining of the very famous Anastasia Romanov story with a fantasy twist. I took history as my minor in university, so I am well aware of what people think happened to Anastasia and what really happened to her. For my history nerd self, I wish she had survived that tragic night and one of the many fakes turned out to be her, but we have to accept that she really did die with the rest of her family in a horrible way. Or, did she? Preble puts a very interesting spin on the story and I think she pulls it off very well!

Anastasia is actually not the main character in the story exactly, though. Anne is the actual main character. She is living in the modern world and she dreams about Anastasia, even if she doesn't necessarily know that at the time. It turns out that she has a very big destiny that has been waiting for her for 100 years. I bet she never thought she was soon going to involved with Baba Yaga and a Russian princess thought to be dead for a very long time. She was just a high school student preparing for college, but she finds out that there is more to herself than she could ever dream about.

Weaving fact and fiction, history and fantasy, Preble writes and engaging novel that will be sure to impress. It took me a while to get into it, but once the story unfolded I found myself very engaged! I wanted to see how all the different elements were going to work out and how she was going to pull everything together in the end. Mainly, though, I wanted to dream that it was possible that Anastasia really had been alive all this time and it just took one teenager to overcome great obstacles and save her. Even if that is not what happens in the book, because nothing is ever as it seems, I wanted to dream a little bit. It reminds me of the cartoon version of the Anastasia story that came out several years ago. Isn't there a song that was really famous about dreaming?

To sum this up, I enjoyed this book. I recommend it for those that love to dream, really. It's a bit of heartwarming story, but it has its dark parts. Anne also has some amazing abilities that you might find interesting. Plus, while this is a standalone novel, it totally has potential to have a sequel.

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.

Lavinia is a book of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.

By a strange coincidence, I started this book at the same time that Nymeth was starting it. We decided to do a buddy review. These are her questions for me. You can read my questions for her on her blog.

What was your favourite scene? Why?
- I think my favourite scene was when Lavinia and her friend went down to the beach to see Lavinia's husband for the first time. You have to picture it. Two teenage girls sneak away from their home to spy on a group of soldiers from a foreign land. They could be the enemy, so it was dangerous in the first place, but they also should have been on guard and these girls managed to watch them for quite some time. I thought it was it was a quaint scene in the midst of all the other drama of the time. That is not to say that there were not other scenes that I enjoyed, but that is the one that came to mind first.

What did you think about the way Le Guin framed the story?
- I really liked it. In a way, you knew the whole story before it even unfolded, but if you were like me, there were a lot of names being revealed and without a context I forgot most of the story. I wasn't sure how it would work having Lavinia aware of what was going to happen before it happened, but it turned out fine in the end. It makes you think, really. Le Guin wrote her novel as a poet was telling Lavinia's story. What if that is all that living is? Several books I have read lately have used this idea and I have to admit that it does sometimes give me pause.

What about the setting? I know not all that much is known about Bronze Age Italy, so there isn’t much we can compare it with, but did you find it convincing?
- Like you said, not a lot is known about the history that is represented, but there was nothing in the book that made me think it was entirely implausible. I think for what we know about this time period in history, Le Guin did a very good job of representing it. She didn't try to go too far out of the realm of possibilty just because it is a little known part of history and she is essentially a sci-fi/fantasy author, so I think it worked. I enjoyed it, anyway!

What did you think of Aeneas’ son Ascanius?
- Well, I am not really all that sure. I was thinking this very question while reading this book, to be entirely honest. At times I didn't like him, but there were other times that felt sorry for him. I think he just felt lost. He had been through a lot and was not really sure what was the correct way to handle things anymore. He wanted very much for his father to be proud of him, but at the same time he wasn't sure how to go about doing that. He also lived a lifestyle that was not exactly proper for the times, so he often had to live a lie. By the end of the book, I actually didn't mind him, but in the beginning he was not my favourite character. I also think he got blamed for things that were not really within his control, which made him look even worse than he actually was.

Was there anything about the novel you were less than happy with?
- Actually, I think I consider this my favourite Ursula Le Guin novel. It reminds me of Marion Zimmer Bradley and other female-told novels. There are not enough books of this nature out there, so you have to appreciate what you have. Ursula is an author that I consider a hit or miss author with me, so to be able to say that I loved this book is very rare when she is considered. I am still not a huge fan of her writing style, or maybe voice is the best way to word it, but it worked for this novel. I recommend it!

Another book that I wish I had bought and not just read through the library...

Black Ships by Jo Graham

Books Completed: 53
Completion Date: February, 2009
Pages: 448
Publication Date: March 10, 2008

Reason for Reading: For Fun, New Author Challenge

"Haunting and bittersweet, lush and vivid, this extraordinary story has lived with me since I first read it." --Naomi Novik, author of His Majesty's Dragon

The world is ending. One by one the mighty cities are falling, to earthquakes, to flood, to raiders on both land and sea.

In a time of war and doubt, Gull is an oracle. Daughter of a slave taken from fallen Troy, chosen at the age of seven to be the voice of the Lady of the Dead, it is her destiny to counsel kings.

When nine black ships appear, captained by an exiled Trojan prince, Gull must decide between the life she has been destined for and the most perilous adventure -- to join the remnant of her mother's people in their desperate flight. From the doomed bastions of the City of Pirates to the temples of Byblos, from the intrigues of the Egyptian court to the haunted caves beneath Mount Vesuvius, only Gull can guide Prince Aeneas on his quest, and only she can dare the gates of the Underworld itself to lead him to his destiny.

In the last shadowed days of the Age of Bronze, one woman dreams of the world beginning anew. This is her story.

I have to have a little 'fangirl' moment and tell the plain truth: I loved this book! Most of this happened pre-blogging days, but I am a huge Marion Zimmer Bradley fan. (I haven't read her Darkover series yet, though.) Anyway, I am talking more about Mists of Avalon and all the related books in the series. I love that series, but we all know me and rereading! Anyway, that is a long-winded way of saying that Jo Graham is the first author to remind me of Bradley. Marion Bradley wrote about strong women who are in many ways ahead of their times. There was also a spiritual background to her novels. Graham has taken those same ideas and made them her own.

Black Ships is the story of Gull. She is the daughter of a slave. Her mother was kidnapped from Troy after it was defeated. On the voyage to her new home Gull's mother discovers that she is pregnant. Her father is a faceless member of the enemy group. Instead of giving up all hope, though, her mother decides to have the child. Gull believes that she will be a slave for the rest of her life, but there are other plans for her. An accident leaves her unable to work, so her mother has to find another path for her to follow. Given into the care of an Oracle, Gull has a very different life than her mothers ahead of her. When the old Oracle dies and she must take her place, she finds herself thrust into a destiny that will go down in the history books.

Graham captures Gull in a very captivating way. She is far from perfect, but she is the voice of the Lady. She foresees nine ships coming to her home, and when this actually happens she finds her life changed forever. It appears that members of her mothers' culture have survived and they are plagued with the desire to find a new home. Gull joins the exiled prince as his Oracle and their adventures begin. The geography that they cover is very impressive. My favourite part was when they were in Egypt, but I like Egyptian novels to begin with. Prince Aeneas gets a bit side-tracked with the Pharoah's sister, and it looks for a while that they might be staying in Egypt permanently.

This is Gull's story. It starts when she is very young and goes to when she is nearing the end. While she is the main focus, there are also many wonderful secondary characters. Prince Aeneas is intriguing. He is a prince, but he soon has to become a king. It is Gull that helps him on that journey. Graham has done a very good job for a first novel. I really enjoyed the mixing of history and myth. I look forward to reading her next book!

Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling by David Wolman

Books Completed: 17
Completion Date: January, 2009
Pages: 224
Publication Date: September 29, 2008

Reason for Reading: Received from Publisher. TBR Challenge 2009. New Author Challenge.

Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent 'h'? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check?

Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English spelling, David Wolman takes us on a wordly adventure from English battlefields to Google headquarters. Along the way, he pickets with spelling reformers outside the national spelling bee, visits the town in Belgium, not England, where the first English books were printed, and takes a road-trip with the boss at Merriam-Webster Inc. The journey is punctuated by spelling battles waged by the likes of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie and the members of today's Simplified Spelling Society.

Rich with history, pop culture, curiosity and humor, Righting the Mother Tongue explores how English spelling came to be, traces efforts to mend the code and imagines the shape of tomorrow's words.

First things first. Yes, I know we were supposed to read a category romance, but I never read category romance, so this is going to have to do! Secondly, I know that I only got this book in 2009, but that is because the copy I was supposed to get in 2008 never made it to me, so I had to wait to have it sent again! And, lastly, I am so way later with this review than I meant to be, but it is still in time...

This book was really interesting! I am an English major, so the English language interests me as both a reader and a student (even if I have graduated). My boyfriend is always saying that it is because of the technology today that people cannot spell. I found it really interesting to read this book, where that topic was looked at, as long as a lot of other spelling ideas. It is kind of interesting. Before I went to university my friends called me a spelling Nazi, but I have got so slack in later years. When I started this blog I was still in university, and I used it to be casual because I had to be perfect all the time! I rarely reread what I wrote, and believe me, it shows! (I try to do better now, but it is still normally a hasty attempt at the English language!) I do use complete sentences when I send text messages or IM's, though... What about you folks?

This book is in many ways the history of spelling. The English language is rather complicated, in case people haven't noticed, so it was interesting to read about the evolution of it. He also talks about people that advocate for a simpler form of spelling. There were examples, and they actually made my head hurt! They might be the words 'correctly' sounded out, but I have read so much over the years that I just read. In many ways my mind just assumes the word and only pauses when I come across a word that is not in my normal vocabulary. So, I don't know if I could handle changes to spelling... As complicated as it is, I can get by! When I actually put my mind to it, I can spell and use grammar quite well!

I do recommend this book. It was really interesting and written in a fun way. It wasn't dry, or at least, I didn't find it dry. I especially enjoyed the history lessons, because history has always been a hobby of mine. He even talks about the creation of spell-check and the advantages and disadvantages of it. I know that I love spell-check. It is not necessarily for spelling mistakes for me, though; it is really more for the typos that I might not notice otherwise! While not perfect, it is helpful!

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The Journal of Helene Berr translated by David Bellos

Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has there been such a book as this: The joyful but ultimately heartbreaking journal of a young Jewish woman in occupied Paris, now being published for the first time, 63 years after her death in a Nazi concentration camp.

On April 7, 1942, Hélène Berr, a 21-year-old Jewish student of English literature at the Sorbonne, took up her pen and started to keep a journal, writing with verve and style about her everyday life in Paris — about her studies, her friends, her growing affection for the “boy with the grey eyes,” about the sun in the dewdrops, and about the effect of the growing restrictions imposed by France’s Nazi occupiers. Berr brought a keen literary sensibility to her writing, a talent that renders the story it relates all the more rich, all the more heartbreaking.

The first day Berr has to wear the yellow star on her coat, she writes, “I held my head high and looked people so straight in the eye they turned away. But it’s hard.” More, many more, humiliations were to follow, which she records, now with a view to posterity. She wants the journal to go to her fiancé, who has enrolled with the Free French Forces, as she knows she may not live much longer. She was right. The final entry is dated February 15, 1944, and ends with the chilling words: “Horror! Horror! Horror!” Berr and her family were arrested three weeks later. She went — as was discovered later — on the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus in April 1945, within a month of Anne Frank and just days before the liberation of the camp.

The journal did eventually reach her fiancé, and for over fifty years it was kept private. In 2002, it was donated to the Memorial of the Shoah in Paris. Before it was first published in France in January 2008, translation rights had already been sold for twelve languages.

I hate to write this review. I actually finished this book yesterday, but I wasn't sure what to say! The truth of the matter is, I did not like this book at all! And, you know, it wasn't the subject matter, it was the translation. I imagine that if you were reading this book in the original, it would really work for you, but I found the writing so hard to read! It just didn't flow and I had to work at it so much that I would get to the end of a page and feel like I had been reading the same one over and over again. I am sure it is just the switch from one language to another, and that I am being way too picky, but there you have it, this book drove me crazy!

There was another problem, too. Frankly, Helene must know every person in Paris. That's great, it is good to have lots of friends, but she of course would write about them in her journal because she spent days with them. She didn't plan on becoming a published author. Seriously, though, I spent way too much time trying to keep everyone straight! And, the translator put the names in and then didn't do much foot-noting, so I was totally lost as to the relavance of these people. I would start to wonder if I should remember the names because they were going to become vital later, or is this just a passing reference. This was the first part of the book. By the time I sludged through all that I was just too overwhelmed with names and it probably soured me for the later parts of this book.

I had to say I didn't like it because it is about such an important aspect of history and it is normally something that I would like. I have to wonder if someone else had translated it, would I like it better? I mean, she lived a very interesting and depressing life. It is a part of our history, what happened to her and her family. I just didn't like how the story was presented! This is the problems with journals that are turned into books... too much pointless rambling! So, I hate to say it, but I don't recommend this book at all! It's a pity, really! That being said, I think that if you get a chance to read it, you still should. Like I said, it is an important part of our history, and is not the fault of Helene that her story was told so poorly... Does this make sense?

I do thank McClelland & Stewart for the chance to read this book, though!

Can you Imagine?

One of the blogs I read always has interesting articles up on historical events, and one of the recent ones made me raise an eyebrow. Apparently Genghis Khan was a very busy fellow! Some families are dying out, but not his, it looks like he has 16 million male descendants living today. Yes, you read that right. I did not think I did at the time, at first I thought it said "16" and did not know why that was a big deal. This means that he would have had to father anywhere from hundreds to thousands of children! How on earth did the guy manage to create an empire and still manage to spend so much time in the sack! So, that was my interesting read for the evening. To read the full article on Michelle's blog, click here. I must point out that the number only represents the men, there would be women too. Someone was a very busy fellow!

The article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail, and is linked directly to it on Michelle's blog.