To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 I don't know what to say about it, except that it fully deserves the praise that it has collected.  It's brilliant.  Weighty, but up-lifting.  Beautiful.  Honest.  Well worth the read.

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

I was surprised at how much I liked this book.  I'm normally just frustrated with books which include magic which may not be magic at all - I like fantasy, I like historical fiction, I like to know what I'm getting into.  But somehow this was such a well-told story that it didn't bother me at all.  And as a coming of age, family reconciliation story it was beautiful.  Suitable for young advanced readers; there is some talk of ghosts and one death scene.  Set in the Great Depression with flashbacks to WWI, just before the great Spanish Influenza epidemic - there are some serious topics, but (I felt) very well dealt with.

Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser

I did not always love the writing in this book (or, to be more precise, the editing) but goodness if it doesn't lay down a compellingly readable story. I mean, really: a formerly-dominant-world-religion, finding itself persecuted in a land where it is now a minority, has adherents who decide that terrorism-- specifically, destroying a major government building in an eye-catching ball of fire-- is the way to let the rest of the populace know that they are really serious about their demands. Of course, if you grew up celebrating Guy Fawkes' Day, none of that may be new to you; what is new about this book is that Ms. Fraser does a creditable job of describing both the situation in general and the personalities of the persons involved in such a way that you kind of know why they did what they did. The leader of the terrorists (who was not Guy Fawkes) was both charismatic and crazy; the one priest who was executed in connection to the affair had argued the entire time against terrorism; he did so when one of the plotters confessed what they were planning to do (and thought, at the time, that he had convinced the fellow not to go through with it) and he did so again, from the scaffold, just before he was hanged. You wouldn't think this would make for cheerful reading, but it kind of does.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This book - and this entire series - is a lovely portrait of life in the late 1800's - I am struck, each time I read it, with how much detail of daily life it has. Simply laid out to appeal to even a very young listening audience, I've found it good reading-aloud material for all ages. It's about a girl, but I've found boys to be as interested in the accounts of panthers and bears and household chores (making bullets, butchering pigs) as any girl I've ever known. And really worth re-reading. It is, technically, fiction; my best guess, given the level of detail, (and the difference between the earlier books, which she fully edited, and the last, published after she died, without said editing) that she smoothed over some of the difficulties of family life - but the everydayness of frontier life seems to be accurate (as would details of life in the late 1900's in any book someone my age would write, as the audience would spot discrepancies immediately). Delightful, excellent, and repeatedly re-visitable.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

I picked this book up from the local library a few years ago, shortly after it came out. Wonderful! For the first time ever, I really felt like I really understood the relationship between physics and astronomy. The arguments for and against human evolution - not over-simplified; and dozens of bits and pieces of stuff that just made lots of random science make sense as a cohesive whole. Very, very well done.

The Big Necessity by Rose George

I picked this up from the library new book display a few weeks back; it was very enlightening. It talks about the many ways people deal with sanitation, and the problems and effectiveness of each.
Written as a popular science work rather than a technical treatise, I sometimes wished the author would have given a bit more technical detail. Even so, the overall picture is very clear: human waste must be disposed of. Safely. Or people die. What works about the systems we use now, what doesn't, and what the options are. She doesn't offer clear-cut solutions - there don't seem to be any. But I would definitely recommend this to every adult - and many teens - as an essential part of knowing how the necessities of life work.

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

This is the book that, after years of thinking I detested history, convinced me I actually love it. Beautifully constructed, each chapter begins with a copy of a page or pages under consideration, followed by a transcription, followed by a carefully constructed picture of some portion of life in the time described. Logically and rigorously put together; a wonderful, wonderful book.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson

On mild reflection, it seems particularly appropriate that a blog devoted to reviews of things I love best - books, music, the occasional movie, and useful or remarkable objects of other varieties - should begin with a review of Bill Bryson's book, At Home. Bill Bryson lives in an old house in England, which was built for a clergyman around 150 years ago. The chapters of the book are titled, for the most part, after the rooms in the house, and each is a history of the things to be found in - or related to - that room. It is a remarkable book, suitable for reading aloud (though I expect the chapter on the bedroom may want abridging for the younger set), delightfully set out in Bryson's best tradition - humorous, witty, and informative. From the introduction: "Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up." And he makes his case over the next 480 pages or so most convincingly and delightfully.

As a homeschooling parent, I feel compelled to add a note about its educational value: For the advanced pre-teen and older, I have not seen a better introduction to world/European history.