To Kill a Mockingbird

By Harper Lee
Rated: 5 Stars!!!!!!
Audio book
Narrated by: Sissy Spacek

This book was a re-read for me.  I read it several years ago and like most of the rest of the world I loved it.  I have been checking from to to time to see if audible had added it to their catalog and finally it showed up.

I purchased it the day it became available and immediately listened to it straight through and it was magic.  Sissy Spacek's narration is pure genius.  It transforms what was already one of the best books I had ever read and manages to add even more dimensions to it.  I grew up in small towns in the South and was a little girl very much like Scout.  I was transported straight back into my childhood.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

In Falling Snow

By: Mary Rose MacColl

Rated: 5 Stars

Audiobook

This month marks the 100th anniversary of World War One, also known as The Great War. The early 20th century is my favorite period of history and some very notable books have been set in this time period. This book is probably going on my list of best reads in 2014. 

Falling Snow is a beautifully written book that focusses on the lives of some very strong women, both in the past and the present. It's also a very poignant book as there was nothing about that war that wasn't sad. But it is also a very uplifting book about accomplishments, love, secrets, sorrows and survival both in the past and the present.

My only quibble with the book is that it switched back and forth between the past and the future. That's always a problem with me but if the book is good enough I don't groan too loud.

Publisher's Summary

A best-selling Australian writer's American debut and a heart-wrenching novel of World War I.

Iris Crane's tranquil life is shattered when a letter summons memories from her bittersweet past: her first love, her best friend, and the tragedy that changed everything. Iris, a young Australian nurse, travels to France during World War I to bring home her 15-year-old brother, who ran away to enlist. But in Paris she meets the charismatic Dr. Frances Ivens, who convinces Iris to help establish a field hospital in the old abbey at Royaumont, staffed entirely by women - a decision that will change her life.

Seamlessly interwoven is the story of Grace, Iris' granddaughter in 1970s Australia. Together their narratives paint a portrait of the changing role of women in medicine and the powerful legacy of love.

The Care and Management of Lies: A Novel of the Great War

By Jacqueline Winspeare
Rated 3 1/3 Stars
Audiobook

This book didn't work nearly as well for me as Winspeare's Masie Dobbs series does.   It was OK I guess but sadly I found it very predictable. I would not recommend it unless you knew nothing about that era and wanted the history lesson.  As always Winspeare does a great job with the atmosphere of that time but there is really nothing driving this book as far as story. I knew in the first chapter how it was going to end.

What I did enjoy about the book was her portrait of life on a small Kentish farm.  I also enjoyed the way Kezia, the wife who ran the farm and kept the home fires burning while her husband went off to war.  She painted lovely word pictures in her letters to him of imaginary meals that she was cooking for them as if he was there with her.  I thought that was a lovely  way to convey a feeling of comfort and a connection to home.  I thought that was cleverly done by the author although the recipes did wander out into left field from time to time.

I did not care for the ending. It ended too abruptly.  I know that Happy Ever Afters were thin on the ground at the end of WW1 but I'm not a reader who needs stark reality all the time.  A little fantasy can be a good thing sometimes.