1. Luke Barr, Provence, 1970--M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste. (These three plus Judith Jones, Simone Beck, and Richard Olney gathered spontaneously in the South of France in late 1970 as they cooked for each other and contemplated new directions for themselves and their cuisine. Which seemed to boil down to keeping the French insistence on fresh, quality ingredients and proper cooking time plus introducing an American emphasis on a more casual but still elegant, delicious, and even easy cuisine. A wonderful book for those who love Provence and want to learn more about these "six iconic culinary figures.")
2. Donald Hall, Unpacking the Boxes, A Memoir of a Life in Poetry. (How he turned himself into a full-time poet--something he wanted to be since childhood. His years at Harvard and Oxford, his youthful ego, friends, lovers ... his grief over his wife's death and tenure as United States Poet Laureate. A straight-forward account.)
3. Joanna Hodgkin, Amateurs in Eden, the Story of a Bohemian Marriage--Nancy and Lawrence Durrell. (Wonderful description of Durrell--who wrote the Alexandria Quartet--and his first wife, Nancy, their friendships with Henry Miller and Anais Nin among others, their flight from war when living in Greece, and the author's description of these two completely different people, both of them flawed and unique. Durrell comes across as a pretty odd duck. For instance, at 5'4", he wanted to keep beautiful, leggy Nancy in the background, especially if she spoke to men taller than he.)
4. David Howarth, 1066, The Year of the Conquest. (Highly readable, splendid account written for the general reader and filled with wonderful tidbits as well as the author's opinions and assessments. With such weapons as battle-axes, swords, and spears, javelins plus stones tied to sticks, the Battle of Hastings, when William defeated Harold, was one with little sound. No gunpowder. Afterwards, the English suffered greatly as 200,000 Normans arrived and at least 300,000 English--one in five--were killed or starved out by the seizure of their stock and land or thrown into prisons and castles that William built not as protection against foreigners but against the English themselves.)
5. Azar Nafisi, Things I've Been Silent About. (She who wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran. This is her personal story as an Iranian living in Tehran before, during, and after the Revolution. Lots here about family problems including lies told each other to try and soften life's troubles Her father's four years in jail on false charges--he who had been mayor of Tehran. Also, her time going to school in England and to university in Oklahoma.)
6. Walter Sullivan, The War the Women Lived, Female Voices from the Confederate South. (Excellent and engaging. Diary excerpts from 1859-1865 of nurses, spies, society woman, and the educated living in small towns. Everyone helped everyone. That way, they knew that if their loved ones needed attention, someone was tending them. They hid silver in their hoop-skirts. They loaded carts with any stores or valuables that remained and hid them in the woods. They found letters on "dead Federals" from northern wives asking their husbands to send them silk dresses, watches. One wanted a piano since she said she could not afford one herself. At the end of the war, when the Southern currency was worthless, the people were provided with "a card of buttons with which they count on buying a meal or two .. or a paper of pins." Reading all this makes your head reel.)
7. Rupert Wilkinson, Surviving a Japanese Internment Camp, Life and Liberation at Santo Tomas, Manila, in World War II. (The Manila university-turned-prison-camp where the Japanese incarcerated more American civilians than anywhere else. Very thorough. Written by one of the British internees who was a child at the time--there with his mother.)
8. Caroline Zoob, Virginia Woolf's Garden, The Story of the Garden at Monk's House. (House and garden are in the village of Rodmell just near the Channel coast. This was really more Leonard Woolf's garden than Virginia's since he did most of the work and planning. There's a veggie garden, an orchard, brick pathways, statuary, all under the view of a Norman church tower. The author's watercolors plus needlework show the house/garden plan. Good photos and text, too. The author and her husband were National Trust tenants from 2000 to 2010.)
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