Friday Finds (October 25)

Hosted by Should be Reading

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

So, come on — share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

We had a really big book sale here on this little island last Saturday in aid of Guide Dogs for the Blind. So despite flying home late on Friday evening I was ready to see my best friend to go and see what we could find at 9 am Saturday morning.

I was really restrained and only chose three books all non-fiction, how good am I?

We Danced All Night by Martin Pugh

Blurb

Martin Pugh offers a uniquely untraditional view of Britain’s inter-war period; that among the many dramatic social changes taking place, our modern consumer society of dedicated shoppers effectively took shape during the 1930s. Goodreads

Daddy’s Rules by Rachel Sontag

Blurb

Her father ruled her world. Her mother couldn’t save her. So she had to save herself.
Rachel Sontag grew up in a family of four whose apparently happy exterior concealed a disturbing pattern of psychological abuse by her father and a distressing passivity on her mother’s part.
Rachel was a bright and loving girl who tried to please her parents. But nothing was ever good enough for her pathologically controlling father, who would drag her out of bed in the middle of the night and force her to repeat after him: ‘I’m stupid, I’m worthless, I wish I had never been born’. Her mother, on and off anti-depressants and entirely under the sway of her husband, could – or would – do nothing but watch.
As Rachel’s family slowly crumbles under the pressure of a man who refuses to accept his children for what they are, Rachel is forced to ever greater extremes in order to free herself from his crushing grip, in this compelling and beautifully written memoir. Amazon

The Human Mind by Robert Winston

Blurb

Professor Winston takes us deep into the workings of the enigmatic human mind and shows us how we can boost our intelligence and dip into creative powers we never knew we had. By becoming the master of our own mind, we can break old habits, fight bad moods, keep our brain fit as we enter old age, and prevent illness. But perhaps the great paradox is this: because ultimately the human mind is all we have to help us understand itself, science may never quite explain everything about the complex and mysterious object that makes each of us who we are. Amazon

I have also added one more to my TBR which took my fancy.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein which I came across on Chrissie Reads 

Blurb

Two young women become unlikely best friends during WWII, until one is captured by the Gestapo. Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a special operations executive. Yet whenever their paths cross, they complement each other perfectly and before long become devoted to each other. But then a vital mission
goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France. She is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story begins in “Verity’s” own words, as she writes her account for her captors. Truth or lies? Honour or betrayal? Everything they’ve ever believed in is put to the test… Amazon

The only downside to this is that Elizabeth Wein has another book called Rose Under Fire so this one book may well turn into two!

Related articles

• Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein (thisreadersview.wordpress.com)
• “Code Name Verity” by Elizabeth Wein (greenwichlibrary.org)