JustmeJoanne

Hedy Keisler was a young aspiring actress in Vienna in 1933. She was gorgeous and her acting was well received. She had done a movie before acting on the stage, but it had not received a lot of notice.
In the audience one night, a gentleman showered her with flowers. He also introduced himself to her mother and father and proceeded to court Miss Keisler. The gentleman in question was Fritz Mandl, the richest man in Austria at the time....

Odette is on the run again with her accident-causing mother, Anneline. Anneline has a tendency to bring on death to people she gets involved with (7 husbands to be exact). They come to a town called Nevers and start to settle in.
The town is filled with eccentric characters: a man who obsessively smells hands, a piglet who takes over mothering a chick, a donkey who brays loudly at night speaking in Latin, etc. While Odette seems to feel a sense of wanting to feel secure, Anneline...

What a generational treasure trove this novel is!
Two half sisters are born in two different villages in Ghana, unaware of each other. One is chosen to marry an Englishman and live at Cape Coast Castle. The other is captured and sold into slavery, being held in the same castle....

Paul Kalanithi has to be one of the smartest, bravest men I have ever had the opportunity to learn about. While studying and becoming a neurosurgeon/neuroscientist, he learns of becoming afflicted with lung cancer.
Paul had entered college studying literature, and was going to become a writer. He decided that his curiosity about death and science prompted him to become a neurosurgeon....