My Name is Anton

It’s 1965, and life has taken a turn for eighteen-year-old Anton Addison-Rice. Nearly a year after his brother died in a tragic accident, Anton is still wounded―physically and emotionally. Alone for the holidays, he catches a glimpse of his neighbor Edith across the street one evening and realizes that she’s in danger.

Anton is determined to help Edith leave her abusive marriage. Frightened and fifteen years Anton’s senior, Edith is slow to trust. But when she needs a safe place to stay, she lets down her guard, and over the course of ten days an unlikely friendship grows. As Anton falls hopelessly and selflessly in love, Edith fears both her husband finding her and Anton getting hurt. She must disappear without telling anyone where she’s going―even Anton.If keeping Edith safe means letting her go, Anton will say goodbye forever. Or so he believes. What would happen, though, if one day their paths should cross again?  (this is the Amazon blurb)

I basically read this book in a day.  It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  My kitchen was cleaned up.  I was not quite ready to jump in on Christmas.  And I felt like knitting.  I was not mesmerized.  The book was interesting to read but not my favorite book that I had ever read.  Still I turn them off if they are not of interest.  Edith was Anton's love of his life!  There is no doubt about that fact.  That is the basis of this book.  There is nothing that Anton does in his life that is not with Edith's well being and happiness in his mind. Can anyone be that unselfish?  Wow!

 

The Last Bookshop in London

Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love, and the enduring power of literature.

August 1939: London is dismal under the weight of impending war with Germany as Hitler’s forces continue to sweep across Europe. Into this uncertain maelstrom steps Grace Bennett, young and ready for a fresh start in the bustling city streets she’s always dreamed of - and miles away from her troubled past in the countryside.

With aspirations of working at a department store, Grace never imagined she’d wind up employed at Primrose Hill, an offbeat bookshop nestled in the heart of the city - after all, she’s never been much of a reader. Overwhelmed with organizing the cluttered store, she doesn’t have time to read the books she sells. But when one is gifted to her, what starts as an obligation becomes a passion that draws her into the incredible world of literature.

As the Blitz rains down bombs on the city night after night, a devastating attack leaves the libraries and shops of London’s literary center in ruins. Miraculously, Grace’s bookshop survives the firestorm. Through blackouts and air raids, Grace continues running the shop, discovering a newfound comfort in the power of words and storytelling that unites her community in ways she never imagined - a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of war-torn London. 

The above is the Amazon information for this book.  I can't remember when the books about World War II began to appeal to me.  I had never had interest .....but then I began to read.  I think perhaps because my generation knew the men who had fought in that war and survived, it did not feel like history.  But what I have discovered is that each book zeroes into a different perspective of the war and I like looking under the microscope at each story that make up the story of the war.  This seemed at first like a mediocre tale about what was happening in London. BUT the author took the story and ran with it.  WOW!  I found it to be an exceptional read.  Each of the characters has a story that one can identify with.  But the highlight is the experience that Grace lives through as a Warden on the streets of London during the terrible bombs!

I would add at the finish of the book that I also take away from the story that one does not have to "go off to war" to make great contributions to the situation.  Grace does her part in her own neighborhood in her own way and is a hero because of her contribution.

 

The Land Beyond the Sea

My knitting buddy, Dar, particularly likes this author:  Sharon Kay Penman.  So I bought several of her books to read via audible.  And Dar is right!  This lady writes in such a very engaging way.  This book is about Europeans living in Jerusalem during the period of the Crusades. And even though it is not a subject that I know about nor am even particularly interested in, I find that I look forward to turning the audible version of the book on each evening.  The story is about a young boy who inherits from his father the throne of king for this kingdom.  At the part of the book that I am reading now is seems that Baldwin (the young king) is learning that he has leprosy.  This disease is probably the worst thing that can happen to a person in this time period in this place.  And yet Baldwin is shown to be courageous and intelligent and "made of the right stuff".  The book is very entertaining.

I thought tonight:  "Is this book really based on true history?"  and I did a google to find out.  Here is the blog post that I read:

https://shereadsnovels.com/2021/01/06/the-land-beyond-the-sea-by-sharon-penman/

 

The Book of Lost Friends

Louisiana, 1875: in the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest. For heiresses Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an agonising question. Could her long-lost family still be out there? 

Louisiana, 1987: arriving in Augustine, Louisiana, first-year teacher Benedetta Silva finds herself teaching students whose poverty-stricken lives she can scarcely comprehend. The town is impossibly set in its ways, suspicious of new ideas and new people. But amid the gnarled live oaks and ancient plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey and a hidden book that could change everything.

A heart-wrenching novel inspired by little-known historical events, based on actual 'Lost Friends' advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones, lost to them when their families were sold off.

I liked this book a lot.  Hannie Gosset was my favorite character by far.  I looked forward to turning on the book and picking up my knitting!  I read via audible.

 

Tidelands

 

I read this book on the recommendation of my daughter, Sarah.  And I did really like the book.  But I got to the end of the book and I just couldn't finish it.  I could not think of a way that the heroin was going to be ok.  And so every night I wanted to turn it on, but I couldn't.  But tonight I gritted my teeth and turned it back on.  And it ended about as good as it could end.  Here is the official synopsis:

England 1648. A dangerous time for a woman to be different . . . Midsummer’s Eve, 1648, and England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote Tidelands – the marshy landscape of the south coast.  

Alinor, a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. 

Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbours. This is the time of witch-mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands. 

The Unseen World

 

Synopsis:

The moving story of a daughter’s quest to discover the truth about her beloved father’s hidden past.

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David’s mysterious history comes into question. When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of David’s colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her father’s secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood. What Ada discovers on her journey into a virtual universe will keep the reader riveted until The Unseen World’s heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.

I actually liked this book.  I am not sure that I would call the conclusion heart-stopping.  But I do understand that the author was offering an interesting idea about who really wrote this book.