Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Horse

By

Geraldine Brooks 

It has been almost a year since I finished a book and posted about it on my blog.  I have had the same book on my kindle for that long.  I retired so no longer commute which is when I listened to audio books.  But some recent short car trips alone enabled me to complete and audio book.  It was a really good one!  Therefore I am able to share it with you.  

Geraldine Brooks is one of my go to authors.  I have read five of her six novels and will eventually read any book she writes.  Horse is a historical novel and one of its themes is  the racing industry in the United States during the time frame of just prior to the civil war.  Another theme that weaves throughout the story is equine art.  The book bounces between the 1850s, the 1950s and 2019.  Science is part of the novel as  skeletal reconstruction is touched on along with  the issue of race related to police brutality in our current culture.  This novel is timely and yet timeless.  I really enjoyed listening to it and recommend that others read it too.   

Please click on the book title and author's name above to follow links to more information and enjoy the video that follows.  

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

 

The Lost Apothecary 

by

Sarah Penner

I chose to listen to The Lost Apothecary on audible for the Halloween season because it sounded spooky.  And it did have murder and magic with in its story.  But the book was not frightening at all.  It is a novel about how everyday women survive in a world where they are often mistreated by men.  There are two time lines in the book.  One is the late 1700s when an apothecary shop caters to women's illnesses.  It also provides poisons for women to rid themselves of abusive men in a time when being abused was often something women had no way out of.  Sometimes the men were fathers.  Sometimes they were brothers.  Sometimes they were husbands.  The second time line is modern day where an amateur historian takes a vacation to clear her head after learning of her husbands affair and stumbles upon the mystery of the long forgotten apothecary.  As a woman and a person who enjoys researching family history this book was right up my ally.  I also have an interest in herbs and plant oils.  So all the elements in the book came together for me.  I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.  When I saw it was a harlequin romance I almost didn't download it.  I had a preconceived connection to harlequin romance and true story magazine from the early 1970s.  After noting it had been on several best seller books I went ahead and selected it.    I am so glad I went ahead and gave this book a try.  I won't consider harlequins trash books any more.  This one was delightful!  Please click on the book title and author's name above for more information and enjoy the short book review in the video that follows.  

The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

 

The Healer's War

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

For my birthday gift this year my brother gave me a kindle book to read.  It took me a while to get to it because I was reading another book at the time but once I got into it I have done little else but read it.  The Healer's War is the story of a nurse in Viet Nam during the Viet Nam conflict.  It is a fiction book but is loosely based on the experiences of several nurses, including the author.  It has a science fiction or fantasy slant to it which makes it a really good October read for Halloween.  But it also gives the reader an understanding of how complicated the conflict was.  I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in fiction books about nursing or military history.  Please click on the author's name and book title above to follow the links to more information.  And watch the video that follows about a real nurse who served in Viet Nam in a field hospital on the orthopedic ward just as Kitty, the main character of the Healer's War, did.  

Wheat Belly by William Davis

 

Wheat Belly 

by

William Davis

This is the book that started the gluten free craze a few years ago.  I have always been curious about it so I decided to listen to it on audio and see for myself what it is all about.  Gluten free diets avoid wheat, rye and barley while Paleo diets avoid grains, dairy and legumes.  There are also the low carb keto diets where people keep their carb micro nutrients to a minimum.  These three approaches have been popular in recent years as ways to manage health.  Many doctors will recommend Paleo as a healthy way to eat.  William Davis, the author of Wheat Belly, is a cardiologist.  And those that follow the low carb way of eating have strong beliefs that it is the healthiest way to eat.  While listening to Wheat Belly I was struck by how this is a very important book for those with Celiac Disease or those who are gluten sensitive to read in order to understand how important it is for them to avoid gluten.  I am not convinced the rest of us should limit our intake of gluten to the degree recommended in the book.  Often when limiting carbohydrates one eats a lot more proteins.  This is very hard on a person's kidneys.  I am concerned about kidney disease as the proponents of these diets age.  As a whole, Americans eat too much protein any way.  In addition there is no doubt that Americans consume way too much wheat. We also consume way too much sugar.  As far as the changes in the wheat crops that allowed us to get a handle on world hunger I recommend reading this PDF on the USDA website.  In my opinion the Wheat Belly book is controversial. I agree that it is wise to limit our portions of all the food groups and after listening to this book will probably select my carbs from rice and potatoes and other starchy vegetables other than wheat when possible.  But eating the occasional noodle isn't going to freak me out.  Clean eating is consuming smaller portions of a balanced diet.  It is always a good idea to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and fresh protein.  We need all the food groups to get the nutrients we require.  Most of us do need less than what we consume.  If a person chooses to cut out one of the food groups from their diet then I recommend them investigating if adding supplements to replace the nutrients they are not consuming would be a good idea.  In closing I am glad I listened to this book.  It has made me even more aware of the dangers of over doing it with consumption of  grains.   Please click on the book title and authors name above to follow the links to more information and there is one link to follow in the body of this text.  Also enjoy the video that follows.  

Woman As Healer by Jeanne Achterberg

 

Woman As Healer

by

Jeanne Achterberg

Often as I am researching my family history I run across a woman who was a nurse or a midwife.  These women always catch my eye and often are the ones that I choose to write a biographical sketch about.  In order to understand the world in the various time frames these women practiced their healing skills I wanted to read some background information.  Jeanne Achterberg's book Woman as Healer did a perfect job for me of providing some of that back ground.  She writes of the western experience and her book was written in the 1990s so some of her conclusions are dated, but the book covers the history of women in medicine from the earliest times to the late 20th Century.  It is as in-depth as a text book and not everyone will want to dive into this book but it was perfect for my needs.  There is a lack of material on this subject. Especially in the area of pioneer frontier folk medicine from the 18th and 19th century.  Although I will keep looking for more information,  I am sure Jeanne Achterberg's book is one I will return to as a source time and time again.   Please click on the book title and author's name above for more information and enjoy the video that follows.  

People Of The Book by Geraldine Brooks

 

People of The Book

by

Geraldine Brooks

I have not made it through very many books in 2022 but those that I have read have been extremely good.  Today I finished listening to an audio book, People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks.   This is the fourth book by Geraldine Brooks I have enjoyed and she will be an author I will often return to in the future.  People of the Book is a historical novel.  While fiction, it is based on a true story.   The novel is the story a Jewish prayer book that was created in the 1400s.  The story of its creation is woven in with the story of its survival of the Spanish Inquisition in the 1600s,  its survival of centuries of antisemitism including the later 1800s,  its survival during the 1940s and  Nazi Germany, and it's more recent survival of the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.  Each time the book was saved from the book burnings it was saved by a person and the creation of the book originally involved an artist and a scribe.  The people of the book are these people and those around them.  The novel also includes the story of a researcher looking for the stories that the book tells of every where it has been.  The techniques used to find these answers are fascinating.  The answers are teased out within the stories.  This novel is excellent.  It is a mystery story.  It is a historical novel.  It is multiple love stories.  And it is a book that teaches about historical research.  I highly recommend it.  Please click on the book title and author's name above to follow links to more information.  And enjoy the video that follows.  

The Book Of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

 

The Book of Lost Friends

by

Lisa Wingate

“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name on Earth for the last time.”  ~ Bansky 

A few years ago I listened to a book by Lisa Wingate on audible titled Before We Were Yours and I really enjoyed it.  So when my sister in law told me about this new title by the same author I knew I would enjoy it and The Book of Lost Friends did not disappoint.   It takes place in two time frames roughly a hundred years apart.  The late 1800s story involves a freed slave girl searching for her family while the late 1900s storyline involves a teacher who engages her troubled students in a local history project.  Wingate weaves the two time frames together in a delightful novel that not only kept me on my toes but left me with a happy lump in my throat when it arrived at its finish.  Inspired by a reader who shared with her a project of the Historic New Orleans Society,  Wingate takes historical newspaper ads and stitches them together throughout the novel.   The novel is fiction and only inspired by historical fact.  It is not historically accurate though out as the author takes liberties while writing the book.  I also did not find it entirely realistic.  But it is a great book that I enjoyed a great deal.  It will be one of my favorite books for 2022 and I highly recommend others to enjoy it.  Please click on the links above to find more detailed information and enjoy the video that follows.  It is about a project similar to the one in New Orleans but taking place in Pennsylvania.