Top 5 Wednesday- Books List on History

Today's Top 5 Wednesdays Topic is:
Book List on History
In celebration of Back To School, I created a reading list for a class on a bookish topic of my choice. I decided to pick my second favorite class in Highschool, History. My first was Science and as amazing as it would be to use the Illuminae series as 1-3, I figured you guys deserved a little more creativity than that. 

Now each book on this list represents different pieces in the worlds History, whether it is fiction or non-fiction. I think the writing and story line of these books find a little sliver of events that have happen in the world and for the fiction, displays a realistic picture of what the writer can as accurately as possible portray through research. 

1. My Lobotomy- This book is a memoir of a boy growing up in the 1960's in Northern California. As he grows into a young man, he shows the normal rambunctious tenancies of adolescence. However his parents don't think that his behavior is normal of a man his age and chose to participate in the high criticized practice of lobotomy. Throughout the book we see how the procedure changed the boys life from a loving family dynamic with some bumps in the road to complete abandon. For me, the first few chapters were really slow to read but the events and the writing really started to pick up and I cried several times while reading this. It's amazing how back when science seemed even more of foreign territory than it does today, there were procedures like this that were accepted across the globe. For me, it really reminded me of how different just 70 years makes.

2.The Book Thief- I haven't had a chance to completely finish this book, but I still wanted to put it on this list because I think, although fiction, it represents a very dark time in our world's history. For those who haven't read this book, or got it confused with The Thief Lord like I did for 4 years, this book is set in Nazi Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler. Our main character is a child who was surrendered by her mother to we'll call it Nazi CPS with her brother. The entire book is told from the perspective of Death watching this girl, who becomes the Book Thief. If any of you are familiar with the history of the Nazi party, they were extremely controlling of their citizens, so stealing books was more than just walking into your local B&N and dashing out with a tome. It's more like slipping a burning book into your jacket because you rescued it from the fire they created out of Jewish propaganda. If you are not familiar with the stain on specifically Germany's past, I would definitely educate yourself a little bit before cracking this one open. 

3.A River In Darkness- I picked this book up when Amazon was doing a free book event earlier this year. This is another memoir but this time about a half Japanese half Korean man and the struggles with discrimination on nationality in the 1940's. He started life living in Japan with a japenese mother and korean father who felt the discrimination of his father's heritage. Looking for greener pastures to supply for his family, the boys father moves them to north korea with promises of a better life from the government. Now as we know now, North Korea isn't the most ideal place to vacation, let alone be a resident. The dreams of the transplant family are very quickly squashed when they realized they did not escape the prejudice of a mixed nation family. Throughout the book we see how this man lived well into adulthood with the struggles of a crumbling government and what it took for him to escape. Though the writing is really simple, the story explains in great detail the starvation that strangled a nation that is still suffering today. It took me about a day, maybe a day and a half to read and helped me better understand how different other cultures live even in today's society. 

4. The Royal Diaries Series- We're throwing it way back to some book series that my fellow 90's kids may remember seeing in their school libraries. This series was a collection of 20 fictional books written as diaries of famous women through history. I'm talking Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scots, Anastasia, and even a plethora of less familiar but still notable women through history. For me, I absolutely loved seeing these girls and what they went through in their time periods regardless of the fact that it is fiction. At the end of each book there is additional facts and information on the historical figures throughout the book. I'd highly suggest any middle-grade reader to check these out from their local library or scour through amazon and ebay because a full set is really hard to find. 

5. V for Vendetta/Comic Books- I recently did an entire blog post about why I enjoyed this Graphic Novel and what I did like about the movie so my thoughts about this specific book in general are already out there for you to read. Comic books are great at relating to current events as villains or part of the story line. If you pick up any old comics from 30-40 years ago, sometimes the villain is tied into current events happening when it was originally published. In V for example, the entire antagonist in this plot is the Brittish government and the repercussions of a nuclear war and the threat of HIV breaking out. 

If you made it through the whole post I really appreciate you sticking with my rambling on these books above. I didn't expect to write and gush as much but History really was one of my favorite subjects, and I can't pinpoint just one point in history that fascinates me the most.

Let me know what your favorite subject in school was. Or what historical books I should check out next. I always appreciate a recommendation.