While I am not going to be able to take part in Kailana's November reading challenge, in the spirit of things I thought I would post a list of books I might choose from if I could. (And who knows in the end I might pick out a book and read it anyway). These are books from my TBR piles that I keep in my bedroom, so I can't necessarily vouch for them...but they are all books that I do really want to read. They may not be set primarily in battlefields, but the war is going on at least peripherally.
World War I:
- A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry. This book was nominated for the Booker Prize, and I would probably choose this one to read as I have heard nothing but good things about it. It is about a young Irishman who volunteers to fight with the Allied Forces. This one definitely sounds like a story of the battlefields!
- Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. This is a famous nonfiction account of the War. Brittain, a pacifist, lost not only many friends but her brother and fiance to the War.
- Random Harvest by James Hilton. The story of a shell shocked soldier. This was made into a movie.
- Apple Blossom Time by Kathryn Haig. This is a combination mystery/romance--the story of a daughter trying to find out what happened to her father in WWI.
- The Dark Tide by Vera Brittain. This is a fictional account of two female students at Oxford in 1919 (likely based on Brittain's own experiences).
- Flowers of the Field by Sarah Harrison. My copy has a much nicer cover...this is the story of three women set against the back drop of WWI--from London, the fields of Kent, to Paris, Vienna and the Western Front.
- Mansfield by C.K. Stead. This is a fictional account of the writer Katherine Mansfield set during WWI.
- Fallen Skies by Philippa Gregory. Probably peripheral at best in terms of WWI setting, this book is set in the 1920s in Britain--more of a romance.
World War II:
- The Children's War by Monique Charlesworth. This is a coming of age story about Ilse a half-Jewish girl and Nikolai a German boy.
- The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert. These are short stories or novellas about WWII Germany.
- Grace by Jane Roberts Wood. This is a WWII novel set in small town America.
- Heart Mountain by Gretel Erhlich. I have heard many good things about this one, and I must get around to reading it. It is a novel about the Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII.
- In My Mother's House by Margaret McMullen. I keep pulling this out to read but then getting distracted with something else. This is the story of a young American woman's desire to learn about her mother's hidden WWII past.
- The Siege by Helen Dunmore. Set in Leningrad during the siege, this is the story of one young woman.
- Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum. This is another story of hidden pasts--set in present time Minnesota and WWII Germany.
- A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. This is the story of a young Australian woman who survived a Japanese "death march" and the Australian soldier who helped her.
I likely have many more books about WWI and WWII, but I am too lazy to take a good look through my shelves. I did post a list of books back on Remembrance Day, if you want to look at books specifically on the Holocaust. I also got lots of excellent suggestions for more reading, so take a look at the comment section for that post. I have read some excellent books on the subject: Sebastian Faulks wrote Birdsong (WWI) and Charlotte Grey, which I thought were both excellent! Elizabeth Jane Howard wrote a series of books called The Cazalet Chronicles set agains the backdrop of WWII, which I found very enjoyable. I highly recommend Sebastien Japrisot's A Very Long Engagement--this is a sort of mystery. Set in France during WWI, a young wheel chair bound woman tries to find out what happened to her shell shocked fiance. I love the works of Annabel Davis Goff, an Anglo-Irish writer, whose book This Cold Country is peripherally set against WWII. Marge Piercy wrote a wonderful (long) book called Gone to Soldiers about the American homefront during WWII. There is really so much written about this period it's hard not to find something good to read about the period. Now I really want to cheat and pick out a book...we'll see.
The Slaves of Golconda
One little side note...the Slaves are in the process of picking a new book to read for (tentatively) the end of January. Please consider joining us. You can pop on over here to cast your vote on the next book!