The Duchess of Devonshire - The book and the Film

I was pleasantly surprised when I opened up The Duchess by Amanda Foreman. I had received it from a friend years ago and it had ended up on the bookshelf without me actually having looked through it. I just assumed that it was a novel based on the life of the Duchess of Devonshire, I also had a vague recollection that it had been made into a film. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a very well-written and researched biography of the Duchess Georgiana of Devonshire. As with many other biographies, The Duchess is riddled with names and if you're not familiar with the period, it is difficult to keep them all straight, but I also think that is part of the genre of biographies and you have to take what you can get out of it and not be to uptight about remembering everything, especially if it's a book read for pleasure and not for an assignment.
Now it's on to watch the film as well and I hope it is as good as the book.
Josefine

Title: The Duchess Author: Amanda Foreman ISBN: 978-0-00-728575-4

Ernesto Che Guevara

With the release of the new movies about Ernesto Che Guevara and the new release of his own accounts of what happened Che Guevara is once again popular. I am myself currently reading Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War.
Another good book about the hero (villain?) is the biography Che by the Swedish journalist and writer Björn Kumm. It is a great biography about Che’s life from the beginning to the tragic end. The book has a nice balance of information to keep the book going without the often-common mistake of biographers to try to squeeze in too many things. I haven’t seen it in English yet, but who knows, with the new movies and increasing interest in Che Guevara maybe a translation is on its way.
Josefine

My recommendations: Son of the revolution by Liang Heng & Judith Shapiro

Biographies

I enjoy reading a good biography, may it be someone else’s words or the person himself writing, it is the story that is the most important. I don’t care for the glossy books of famous people but the more obscure biographies of “real” peoples destiny. About the struggles of Zainab Salbi in the Shadow of Saddam or the Anonymous woman writing in Berlin after World War II.
A biography I started years ago but still have trouble finishing is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s the Gulag Archipelago. I read a chapter then I need to stop because the cruelty of one person to another is to great for me to continue.
I think it is the struggle of the ordinary people who overcome unbelievable things that intrigues me the most and make me choose their books. They have overcome so much and then still have the courage to sit down and write about it. It is remarkable.
Josefine

My recommendations: Landing on my feet – a diary of dreams by Kerri Strug