Post by janetandjohn on Apr 5, 2016 12:08:07 GMT
Lots of us choose Remembrance reads in November every year, so for new and old members here is a list for starters, compiled from suggestions from forum members. If you want to know about a book, just have a look on Amazon.
Please post your own titles with authors and if need be the subject matter, and we will add them to the list.
Crimean War
The Rose of Sebastopol - Katherine McMahon
WW1
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemmingway
A Foreign Field - Ben MacIntyre N/F
A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey N/F (autobiography including the author's experience at Gallipoli)
A Long Long Way – Sebastian BarryAll Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
An Ice Cream War – William Boyd
A Nurse's Courage - Maggie Holt
At Break of Day – Elizabeth Speller
Bess Crawford series – Charles Todd
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Blow on a Dead Man's Embers - Mari Strachan
Deafening - Frances Itani
Dear Jelly - Sarah Ridley (letters home to a child)
Eleven Eleven - Paul Dowswell (for younger readers)
Goodbye to All That - Robert Graves N/F (autobiographical account of the years before, during and after WW1)Half of the Human Race - Anthony Quinn
Her Privates We - Frederic Manning
Journey’s End – R C Sherriff
Julian Grenfell - Nicholas Mosley
Life Class – Pat Barker
Maisie Dobbs series – Jacqueline Winspear
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You - Louisa Young
Penguin Book of First World War Stories (Penguin Classics) by Ann-Marie Einhaus and Barbara Korte
Parade's End - Ford Madox FordPrivate Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo
Poppy - Mary Hooper YA
Poppy in the Field - Mary Hooper YA VAD field nurses
Both by Mary Hooper
Both by Mary Hooper
Regeneration trilogy - Pat Barker
Remembrance - Theresa BreslinSing to Silent Stones: Violet's War - David Snell
Stay Where You Are and then Leave - John Boyne
Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger (German perspective)
Strange Meeting – Susan HillTestament of Youth – Vera Brittain N/F
The Absolutist by John Boyne
The Blasphemer – Nigel Farndale
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston – Siegfried Sassoon N/F (autobiographical account of Sassoon's life before and during WW1)
The Dust That Falls From Dreams - Louis de Bernieres
The First Casualty – Ben Elton
The Harrowing – Robert Dinsdale
The House by the Lake - Thomas Harding N/F (history of 20thC Germany, incl through both wars, seen through the prism of just one house and its inhabitants)
The Moon Field - Judith Allnatt
The Night of the Burning - Linda Press Wulf
The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West
The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale
The Trysting Tree – Linda GillardToby’s Room – Pat Barker
Waiting for Sunrise – William Boyd
War Horse - Michael Morpurgo
War is Over - David Almond and David Litchfield - children's read
Wilfred and Eileen - Jonathan SmithWilliam, An Englishman - Cicely Hamilton
Some books of poetry:
The Penguin Book of First World War Stories
Up the Line to Death:War Poets 1914-1918 by Brian Gardner
Poems from the First World War: published in association with the Imperial War Museums by Gaby Morgan
First World War Poems from the Front by Paul O'Prey
Scars Upon My Heart by Catherine Reilly
Poems from the First World War: published in association with the Imperial War Museums by Gaby Morgan
First World War Poems from the Front by Paul O'Prey
Scars Upon My Heart by Catherine Reilly
Between the two Wars
All That I Am - Anna Funder
Field Service - Robert Edric (set after WW1 - the building of the cemeteries)
Daisy Dalrymple series - Carola Dunn (mystery series, lighter than the others and WW1 doesn't play as big a role but it is mentioned)
Fallen Skies – Philippa Gregory
Guernica - Dave Boling (1930s Spain and Spanish Civil War)
Ian Rutledge series - Charles Todd
Kate Shackleton series - Frances Brody
Maisie Dobbs series – Jacqueline Winspear
Reunion - Fred Ulman
The Heroes’ Welcome – Louisa Young
The House by the Lake - Thomas Harding N/F (history of 20thC Germany, incl through both wars, seen through the prism of just one house and its inhabitants)
The Lie - Helen Dunmore
The Long Afternoon –Giles Waterfield
The Return of Captain John Emmett - Elizabeth Speller
The Silver Hand - Terry Deary (YA)
The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton – Elizabeth Speller
This Time of Dying - Reina James (Spanish flu pandemic)Wake – Anna Hope
WW2
22 Britannia Road – Amanda Hodgkinson (displaced Poles)
Address Unknown – Kressmann Taylor
After the Mourning - Barbara Nadel
A God In Ruins - Kate Atkinson
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
An Angel for May - Melvin Burgess YA time travel between 1990 and WW2
An Interrupted Life - Etty HillesumBand of Brothers – Stephen E Ambrose
Bernie Gunther series – Philip Kerr (set in Berlin during Weimar Republic, WW2 and Cold War)
Can Any Mother Help Me? - Jenna Bailey(Handmade magazines circulated during WW2) N/F
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Carrie's War - Nina Bawden
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian FaulksCity of Thieves - David Benioff
Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
Code Talkers - Chester Nez (Navaho Indians using their own language to send codes messages that could not be broken) N/F
Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim (excellent - set on a German submarine)
Doreen - Barbara Noble
Early One Morning – Virginia Baily
Eleanor's Story - An American Girl in Hitler's Germany - Eleanor Ramrath Garner (told from a child's POV)
Enigma - Robert Harris- (about Bletchley, Turing and cracking the Enigma Code)Far to Go - Alison Pick
Few Eggs and No Oranges - Vere Hodgson Diary format N/F
Five Quarters of the Orange – Joanne Harris
Good Evening, Mrs Craven - Mollie Panter-Downes
Goodnight Mr Tom - Michele Magorian
Half Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan (early WW2 and 1993)
Hanns and Rudolf – Thomas Harding N/F (focuses on hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz, but spans period from WW1 through to post WW2)
Henrietta’s War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 – Joyce Dennis (sounds like NF from the title, but actually fiction)
Her Hidden Life - V S Alexander (Food taster for Hitler - fiction)
HHhH – Laurent Binet
Hitler's Canary - Sandy ToksvigHomeland – Clare Francis (set just after WW2)
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford (Japanese internment in America)
Housebound - Winifred Peek
If This is a Woman - Sarah Helm (NF)
King Rat - James Clavell (set in a prisoner of war camp)
Kisses on a Postcard – Terence Frisby
La's Orchestra Saves the World - Alexander McCall Smith
Letters from the Lighthouse - Emma Carroll
Letters to the Lost - Iona Grey
Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
Little Boy Lost - Marghanita Laski
London War Notes - Mollie Panter-Downes
Love and War in London (Mass Observation Diaries)* - Olivia Cockett N/F
Maman, What Are We Called Now? - Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar
Manja - Anna Gmeyner
Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves - Rachel Malik
Miss Ranskill Comes Home - Barbara Euphan Todd
Mrs Miniver - Jan Struther
Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase – Louise Walters
Munich - Robert Harris
Night - Elie WieselNoonday – Pat Barker
On the other Side (Letters to my children from Germany 1040-46) - Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg N/F
Operation Heartache - Duff Campbell (based on a true story)
Our Hidden Lives - Simon Garfield (austerity after the war)* N/F
Private Battles -Simon Garfield * N/F
Resistance – Owen Sheers
Resistance – Anita Shreve
Restless - William Boyd
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay
She Goes to War - Edith Pargeter
Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler - Trudi Kantner N/F
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
Sweet Clarinet - James Riordan
Tallgrass - Sandra Dallas (Japanese internment camps in America)That Summer - Andrew Greig
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
The Burning Blue - James Holland
The Collaborator - Margaret Leroy
The Darkest Hour - Barbara Erskine
The Diary of Anne Frank N/F
The Draughtsman - Robert Lautner
The Empty House - Claude Gutman
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan EngThe Good Italian - Stephen Burke (set in North Africa)
The Greatcoat - Helen Dunmore
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Information Officer – Mark Mills
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
The Iron Necklace – Giles Waterfield
The Land Girls – Angela Huth
The Machine Gunners - Robert Westall
The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan (Australian PoWs working on the Burma Death Railway)
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Night Watch - Sarah WatersThe Postmistress – Sarah Blake
The Railway Man - Eric Lomax N/F
The Report – Jessica Francis Kane
The Rescue Man Anthony Quinn
The Road Between Us – Nigel Farndale
Their Finest Hour and a Half - Lissa Evans
Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden (First Nation Canadian Indians used as snipers)
Three Miles – Robert DinsdaleTo Bed With Grand Music - Marghanita Laski
Two Brothers – Ben Elton
Unexploded – Alison MacLeod
War Crimes for the Home - Liz Jensen
War Horse – Michael Morpurgo
We Are At War - Simon Garfield N/F *
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr
Half Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan
*Mass-Observation diaries. Mass-Observation was a United Kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. "Aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires (known as directives). They also paid investigators to anonymously record people's conversation and behaviour at work, on the street and at various public occasions including public meetings and sporting and religious events."
