Pat

J. Scott's research pieces the details of S. Ann Dunham's life. Her life as a caring, loving mother to two inter-racial children; her hardships as a single mother with an inter-racial child growing up in the 60's in Hawaii & Indonesia; and her devoted research as an anthropologist working in Indonesia. No matter your politics, this is an interesting account of Ann's life that ultimately affected the world and basically changed history. The book has alot of detail about Indonesia and gets technical at times. As a daughter of an Italian mother who left her entire family to move to the US, I remained intrigued by Ann's need to always go back to Indonesia and somehow live a life as someone on the outside looking in.

Big thumbs down for this read! How many words can you use to describe a tent? or contrasting black and white garments and fabric? The character development is awful. You might really enjoy this if you read tarot cards on a regular basis.

I am a fan of the author-Geraldine Brooks. People of the Book was a memorable read. So I decided to give this novel a try.

Although fiction, this book was inspired by a true story. The college of Newtowne was founded in 1636 and is now called Harvard and the total number of graduates in the 17th century was only 465. Caleb was a Wopanaak born on the island of Noepe now known as Martha's Vineyard and one of the first Indians admitted to Harvard in 1661.

Brooks has a gift of taking historical material and letting her imagination create a wonderful story.

This is a dual story combined so honestly by the author. One part of the novel is sharing her life which includes dropping off what most of us perceive as life's trail and the other part of the novel is describing her journey hiking on the Pacific Coast Trail. It's a long walk for an ice cream cone at the East Wind Drive-In near Cascade Locks.

I love Cheryl Strayed's honesty.

Every high school student should read an abridged version of this book!

An oral history, work of literature and academic study of Ida Mae, Robert, and George who all left the South with six million other African Americans between 1916--1970 to seek a better life in the North.

The book is 660 pages long and the author intertwines the stories of these three characters (who never meet each other) as they leave the South and faced the America of the North (New York and Detroit), Midwest (Chicago) and West (Los Angeles). The author tells their stories while also giving the story of the era. The author captures the people and an era in a way that makes you just want to keep reading this very long book.

It's a very insightful book about a part of American history that we tend to ignore and remains too little known to all.

Wow! This story takes you in immediately. The book is about a relationship between Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee that has learned how to talk like the Queen and Sarah, a British magazine editor. So many things happen to Little Bee in this book, both horrible and loving. Not every character in this book is likeable, at times the book gets a little to poignant and a few chapters are hard to read as the horribleness is divulged. The ending is tricky and leaves you filled with hope.

Agent Zigzag starts out life as a conman, thief and jailbird. The beginning of the book starts out with a bang, literally out the window of fancy resort running from the cops. Eddie Chapman is Zig Zag and he becomes a key British double agent.

Zig Zag is recruited by the Germans, who occupied the Channel Islands where he was jailed. Chapman is trained by the Nazis and deploys on his first mission into England where he promptly surrenders to the Brits, who put him to work deceiving the Nazis with false intelligence.

Chapman’s true story is similar to page-turning fiction: charming multiple women, close calls with the law and spying.

I could not keep up with the Double spying codes and directions given to Eddie. I would have screwed up in the first interview with the Nazis and sent to the camps. Eddie was gifted with his craftiness.

One last point, technology was so primitive in WWII compared to how information was shared today. Memorizing codes was so key to being successful.

Very informative story.

For some reason I could not stop listening until I was finished with the story. Although sometimes segmented, the story is eloquently told. The medical descriptions of the trauma experienced by patients visiting the hospital and the trauma experienced by the main characters will make you cringe in discomfort; the mystical relationships of the characters in this book will make you wonder; and living the life of these two twins by paging through this book will make you appreciate life, it's hardships and it's happiness.

Wow! I winced through a part of this story which describes a brutal killing on a train but it just doesn't compare to the overall story of the Armenian Genocide, largely unknown to me. This historical fiction novel is well done and enlightens the reader about the Ottoman Empire's murder of more than 1.5 million Armenians by forcing them to march into the Syrian desert without food and water.

The story is told in two time settings:
A love story unfolds between Elizabeth an American who goes to Syria to provide medical attention to the Armenians. She meets Armen, an Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and child.

The current day Laura, a novelist who comes upon her grandparents letters and diaries in an Armenian History Museum in MA and begins to research the story of her family.

This story should be read/listened by every person who has walked into a doctors office! It's an engaging, horrific, true story set in current time and in 1950 at Johns Hopkins.

It chronicles the life of the woman whose cancerous tissue became the first tissue in history which could be successfully grown as culture and used in various, and countless, experiments from vaccine research to cloning. Her tissue became virtually immortal. If you speak to anyone in the science world about Hela cells the response is " I used those cells for research starting in graduate school." Yet, very little was known about the woman who provided the first Hela cells herself, her life, her family, her history.... setting this author on a journey to find out and provide the reader with portraits of her family as well as an overview of medical ethics, history, culture and healthcare.

Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman living in the suburbs of Baltimore, too poor to get good medical care,and died a horrible death,and yet she lives on.

How can the scientific world progress so much and yet the family of Henrietta Lacks remained burdened with survival in society today trying to figure out what happened to their mother/grandmother.

How far would you go to protect your family?

A serious crime is committed in an upscale neighborhood and everyone becomes unhinged as the circumstances of the crime unfold.

In a courtroom setting the writer combines legal and psycho. drama that keeps you turning the pages. Andy, Laurie and their son Jacob seem somewhat normal one day and as the case unfolds the reader is taken into the heart of this family that becomes shattered.

Is 14 year old Jacob a typical moody teenager hanging out in his room listening to music on his ipod "touch" or is he a psychopathic monster.

Great story!