Joan's picks: The Women and Same as Ever

The Women by Kistin Hannah who is well known for terrific historical fiction. The Nightingale is probably her best loved work, but I’m also a huge fan of The Four Winds. This new one is set during the Vietnam War. Frankie McGrath’s family have a proud history of military service, but when she volunteers to go to Vietnam with the Army Nurse Corps they’re appalled. So too are the American public, who on her return ostracise her, many refusing to believe that women served. The naïve young girl who went to war comes back wiser and wearier, needing to remake her life in the shadow of so much chaos and destruction. This is wonderful storytelling set against the landscape of history. 

Same as Ever by Morgan Housel. He talks about how when people are planning for the future we tend to fixate on all the things that we don’t yet know about which might happen – the what-ifs. He takes an alternative view and says that a better focus is to identify the things that stay the same and never change, as they’re more likely to enable better forecasting; knowledge of the things that never change is more useful, and more important, than an uncertain prediction of an unknowable future. He makes his point through 24 short and highly entertaining stories where he gives examples to support his premise. He’s the author of another book, The Psychology of Money. His premise there is that doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know; it’s about how you behave. 

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