4 Stars. I was fascinated to read Ms. Cherrix’s account of two opposing rocket engineers in the US/USSR space race and the ethical dilemmas surrounding them. I’m writing this from notes I just found a year after finishing the book so I’ll just list my bullet points. I found the contrast between the two engineers to be [...]
4 Stars. I found this absolutely fascinating. It's written in a simple question and answer format with an index and extensive bibliography. It's easy to dip in and out of but I mostly read it straight through. He begins with my first question after reading the title, "What general terms are most appropriate for talking about [...]
Testimony covers a lot of ground, from the making of the movie, Schindler's List, to the idea of filming Holocaust survivor testimonies, to the actual project, and now sharing the testimonies and collecting new ones from ongoing genocides around the world. The first half of the book kept my attention better than the second half. I love the movie so seeing the behind-the-scenes photos and reading about the actor's thoughts was fascinating. I also liked reading about the real people the characters were based on and how filming such harrowing scenes affected all the cast and crew. When the narrative moved on to the idea of the Shoah foundation and collecting the survivor/witness stories, I was still on board. I liked reading about how the USC Shoah Foundation is sharing their expertise with other groups around the world with similar goals. I was reading in bed wondering how you get a job collecting stories. I even searched StoryCorps to see if they were hiring (They were but I'm not bilingual). The idea of such a huge, important undertaking just appealed to me--no, it called to me. The second half got more technical, focusing on ensuring that the testimonies are secure and stay in a format that is always relevant to the modern age. That started to lose me. I'm proficient with the technology that's relevant to my life. I don't really stay on the cutting edge of anything. And I definitely don't understand anything about movie editing, etc. I do understand that all of this is important but I didn't really follow it. I was back on slightly firmer footing when the narrative switched to sharing the testimonies with the world. Even at that, I quickly got to the point where I just wanted to know what website I could…
In WWII France, the French police rounded up over 13,000 Jews and held them in a huge stadium, the Vélodrome d'Hiver, for days before shipping the survivors off to concentration camps. This is the fictional story of one little girl who was taken and what her life might have been like. It's also the story of a modern-day journalist researching Sarah's family. This review is not going to do this book justice. I've waited a couple of weeks to write this and my notes on it are in all honesty pretty fragmented. I read Sarah's story with a cold horror in the pit of my stomach. There were so many ways that everything went wrong that all I can say is that I was just horrified. There were moments of kindness, as there almost always are in Holocaust stories, but the biggest part just left me speechless. Any Holocaust book that captures that feeling is an important one. We can't ever be allowed to forget what happened. What knocked this down to four stars for me was the journalist's story. I didn't care. Parts of it were important for showing how the effects of something that happened over 60 years ago are still being felt today, but I could have done without most of the personal drama. It was insignificant in the context of a book about the Holocaust. One little preachy thing. I could not help but be reminded of the New Orleans Superdome and Hurricane Katrina as I read this. I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trivializing the history, because I promise I'm not, but a stadium where people are trapped just brings it to my mind. This story somehow made the recent event a little more real for me and I can't believe that something like…
When Michael Berg is 15, he has an affair with Hanna Schmitz, who is over twice his age. The affair does eventually come to an end, but their lives are intertwined afterwards. This book should have been passionate, challenging, and emotionally wrenching. But I just felt too distanced from everything. I’m trying to decide if this is because it’s told from Michael’s point of view and he’s a detached kind of guy, but mostly I don’t care. I see what it could have been versus what it is and I’m frustrated. I think the big conflict at the heart of the novel was supposed to be condemnation versus understanding and how hard it is, or even impossible, to feel both at the same time. I think I was supposed to question what I would have done in each character’s place, but I was too aggravated with Michael to have room for introspection. I was too busy wondering if the jackass was ever going to grow some balls and help Hanna out. (Sorry, Mama. But it’s true.) I wanted to smack him. He let her down in so many ways and somehow always found a way to make it her fault. Hanna wasn’t perfect either. In fact, they destroyed each other in round about ways, when they really could have been each other’s salvation. That may have been part of the point of the book also, but that’s not my kind of thing. I’m a die hard fan of the happy ending. Readers not requiring too much of an emotional attachment to their books will like this one. I think if I were that kind of reader I would definitely have enjoyed it more and been willing to think more about the conflicts it contains. But I’m not and so I’m…
4.5 Stars. Oh my goodness. How did I not know about this? I've come across vague statements about how many millions of people died under Stalin's regime in the past. I didn't realize the scale of it, if that makes sense. I somehow thought it was smaller groups of "dissenters" killed across many, many years and across a vast [...]
A successful WWII columnist, Juliet Ashton, has just published a collection of her popular wartime columns. But now she's looking to write a "meatier" book, she just can't find a topic she wants to live with throughout years of research. Then she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a native of Guernsey. He shares with her that her copy of Charles Lamb's book, The Selected Essays of Elia, helped him throughout the Nazi occupation of his island and asks her to help him find more of Lamb's writing. A correspondence begins between Juliet and Dawsey, and ultimately the other members of his book club. The characters in this book were wonderful. I was in love with all of them. They weren't all book lovers when the war started, but by the end, they had experienced how books can make the unbearable a little more bearable. The letter format lets you know the characters more intimately. I think that, other than the characters, what made this book really click with me was that it was obviously written by a book lover for book lovers. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book: "Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books." "Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." "It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?" "Because there is nothing I would…
Jack Rosenblum and his young family were some of the fortunate Jews who escaped Berlin before WWII started. When they disembarked in Great Britain, they were given a pamphlet entitled While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for every Refugee. Mr. Rosenblum becomes obsessed with the idea of living his life according to these rules and becoming a perfect English gentleman. As time goes by, he realizes that the list is incomplete. He begins to add to it and to cross items off the list. The original list states that only English should be spoken. Mr. Rosenblum thinks that every English gentleman owns a suit that was tailored for him on Savile Row. He crosses both items off his list. Things proceed swimmingly for a few years, then Jack hits a snag. Every English gentleman must belong to a golf club. Mr. Rosenblum tries and tries and tries again to join one. No golf clubs are admitting Jews. Jack, being an eternal optimist, decides to buy a place in the country and build his own. It shouldn't be too hard. I'll admit that I was a little nervous about this book as I got a good start on it. I was really liking optimistic Jack and there seemed to be so much room for heartbreak in his story. I don't generally like heart-breaking books. There are heart-breaking moments, but the overall tone is one of hope. Much more my style. I just couldn't help but like and root for Mr. Rosenblum. I wished that he could be comfortable in his own skin and with his own identity, but I understood where he was coming from. He felt that he could only be safe if he became a proper English gentleman. He came from such a hard time…
This is the continuation of the true story of Vladek Spiegelman's survival as a Jew in WWII Poland. Most of what I wrote in my review of Maus I still stands, but there’s a bit more of the author’s feelings included. You can see the catharsis he’s going through as he writes this novel. He’s painfully honest about the conflicting feelings he has toward his father and his mother. Again, most of Vladek’s survival relied on luck, but I was left in awe of his ingenuity and his talent for survival. But the man would drive me crazy. I was left wondering if he was the way he was because of what he went through or if he was just born that way. This book touches on prejudices we still have today, even people who should know better. I have to admit that I was welling up before I had read one word of the story--and I'm not a crier. Maus I and Maus II are just such powerful books. Still highly, highly recommended. Reviewed August 14, 2009 Read an excerpt. Buy Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore, and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.
Art Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, was a Jew living in Poland in WWII. He made it through, and Maus I is Spiegelman’s story of his father’s life, as well as an exploration of the way the lives of the survivors and their family members were never the same. Okay, let’s look at the fact that this is a graphic novel first. It absolutely works. The Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, the French are frogs--you get the idea. This is a young adult book, so I think that helps kids/teens deal with the story a little better. A skeletal mouse is alarming enough, but it would be so much harder for a child to deal with if it had been a photo of a skeletal person. As an adult who knows something about what happened, I found that the form made me see with new eyes. We’ve all seen “Schindler’s List” or read one of the books written by survivors. But this form somehow hit me a little harder, almost as if I were learning about the Holocaust for the first time. It still stays true to the horror and atrocity. Some of it is sort of passed over, but the moments when the violence is shown stand out that much more. I’ve read quite a few Holocaust novels, but the moments of random violence in Maus I hit me hard. Spiegelman took the “less is more” approach and it worked. There were so many things I liked about this book. The historical part of the story opens with Vladek as a reasonably prosperous young mouse marrying into a wealthy family. I liked that this is where it started. I got to see how everything was slowly stripped away until they were desperate for any shelter and any food. That…