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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “All the light we cannot see: a novel” by Anthony Doerr
Kate’s 2¢: “All the light we cannot see: a novel” by Anthony Doerr
“All the light we cannot see: a novel” by Anthony Doerr
saying…
Jill Fox did a very good job of reading this lengthy story. This was the second time I enjoyed spending the time to listen to the novel, although, the time changes of foreshadowing, current time, then, back flashes were sometimes confusing.
A few take-aways:
–To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness…there exists an older, more raw world.
–Open your eyes and see what you can with them, before they close forever.
–Was it true that Captain Nemo never left the Nautilus?
–The keeper of the stone would live forever, but …misfortune would fall on all those he loved.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anthony Doerr is an American author of novels and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Early life and education[edit]
Raised in Cleveland, Ohio,[1] Doerr attended the nearby University School, graduating in 1991. He then majored in history at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, graduating in 1995. He earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University.[2]
Career[edit]
Doerr’s first book was a collection of short stories called The Shell Collector (2002). Many of the stories take place in countries within Africa and New Zealand, where he has worked and lived. His first novel, About Grace, was released in 2004. His memoir, Four Seasons in Rome, was published in 2007, and his second collection of short stories, Memory Wall, was published in 2010.
Doerr’s second novel, All the Light We Cannot See, is set in occupied France during World War II and was published in 2014. It received significant critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.[3] The book was a New York Times bestseller, and was named by the newspaper as a notable book of 2014.[4] It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. It was runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction [5] and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction.[6]
Doerr writes a column on science books for The Boston Globe and is a contributor to The Morning News, an online magazine.
From 2007 to 2010, he was the Writer in Residence for the state of Idaho.[7][8]
Doerr’s third novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, follows three story lines, scattered throughout time: 13-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldest stories to guide her community in peril.[9] Cloud Cuckoo Land was released September 28, 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.[10]
Personal life[edit]
Doerr is married, has twin sons and lives in Boise, Idaho.[11]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
All the light we cannot see: a novel DB79182
Doerr, Anthony. Reading time: 16 hours, 3 minutes.
Read by Jill Fox. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Bestsellers
War Stories
When Paris is invaded by the Nazis, Marie-Laure LeBlanc’s father evacuates her to St. Malo to stay with her great-uncle. Blind since the age of six, Marie-Laure must learn the town by the scale model her father has left. Then, the Germans arrive. Violence, and descriptions of sex. Bestseller. 2014.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Winter solstice” by Rosamunde Pilcher
Kate’s 2¢: “Winter solstice” by Rosamunde Pilcher
“Winter solstice” by Rosamunde Pilcher
saying…
Vanessa Maroney did a good job of reading this lengthy story for the NLS. Her British accent fit right in with the characters.
How does this sound for a picnic feast? Hot soup laced with Sherry from mugs, fresh rolls filled with thick slices of ham and English mustard, a bacon and egg quiche, chicken drumsticks, tomato salad, crisp green apples and chunck of cheddar cheese, plus a flask of boiling hot coffee.
It took a long time to introduce each character, but once they finally came together in the Estate House, all ended as it should. I enjoyed this story.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosamunde Pilcher, OBE (née Scott; 22 September 1924 – 6 February 2019)[2] was a British novelist, best known for her sweeping novels set in Cornwall. Her books have sold over 60 million copies worldwide.[3] Early in her career she was published under the pen name Jane Fraser. In 2001, she received the Corine Literature Prize’s Weltbild Readers’ Prize for Winter Solstice.
Personal life[edit]
She was born Rosamunde Scott on 22 September 1924 in Lelant, Cornwall. Her parents were Helen (née Harvey) and Charles Scott, a British civil servant.[2] Just before her birth her father was posted in Burma, while her mother remained in England.[4] She attended the School of St. Clare in Penzance and Howell’s School Llandaff before going on to Miss Kerr-Sanders’ Secretarial College.[5] She began writing when she was seven, and published her first short story when she was 18.[6]
From 1943 until 1946, Pilcher served with the Women’s Royal Naval Service. On 7 December 1946, she married Graham Hope Pilcher,[5] a war hero and jute industry executive who died in March 2009.[7] They moved to Dundee, Scotland. They had two daughters and two sons.[8] Her son, Robin Pilcher, is also a novelist.[9]
Pilcher died on 6 February 2019, at the age of 94, following a stroke.[10]
Writing career[edit]
In 1949, Pilcher’s first book, a romance novel, was published by Mills and Boon, under the pseudonym Jane Fraser. She published a further ten novels under that name. In 1955, she also began writing under her real name with Secret to Tell. By 1965 she had dropped the pseudonym and was signing her own name to all of her novels.[5]
The breakthrough in Pilcher’s career came in 1987, when she wrote the family saga The Shell Seekers, her fourteenth novel under her own name.[10] It focuses on an elderly British woman, Penelope Keeling, who relives her life in flashbacks, and on her relationship with her adult children. Keeling’s life was not extraordinary, but it spans “a time of huge importance and change in the world.”[6] The novel describes the everyday details of what life during World War II was like for some of those who lived in Britain.[6] The Shell Seekers sold around ten million copies and was translated into more than forty languages.[2] It was adapted for the stage by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham.[8] Pilcher was said to be among the highest-earning women in Britain by the mid-1990s.[11]
Her other major novels include September (1990), Coming Home (1995) and Winter Solstice (2000).[10][12] Coming Home won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by Romantic Novelists’ Association in 1996.[13] The president of the association in 2019, the romance writer Katie Fforde, considers Pilcher to be “groundbreaking as she was the first to bring family sagas to the wider public”.[10] Felicity Bryan, in her obituary for The Guardian, writes that Pilcher took the romance genre to “an altogether higher, wittier level”; she praises Pilcher’s work for its “grittiness and fearless observation” and comments that it is often more prosaic than romantic.[2]
Pilcher retired from writing in 2000.[5] Two years later, in the 2002 New Year Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature.[14][15]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Winter solstice / DB50844
Pilcher, Rosamunde Reading time: 19 hours, 25 minutes.
Vanessa Maroney A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Human Relations
Bestsellers
Elfrida, a retired actress; Oscar, a recent widower; Carrie, recovering from a love affair; Lucy, Carrie’s niece; and Sam, deserted by his wife, spend the winter solstice in a Scottish cottage, where they form a lasting bond that allows them to recover from their various challenges and losses. Bestseller. 2000.
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