When I read a book for CBR, I like to wait a few days to review it so I can gather my thoughts and decide what I want the focus of my review to be. In the case of A Secret History of Witches, this was a mistake. I mostly spent those few days remembering everything I didn’t like about it. A Secret History of Witches is the story of five generations of a family of witches. Story, actually, is a bit strong, as very […]
A Good Book to Finish Coming off the Heels of Holocaust Remembrance Day
This World War II biography is written about Jan and Antonina Zabinksi. Jan was the Warsaw zoo’s zookeeper. Before the war, he and his wife lived in a villa at the zoo and enjoyed a home filled with strange and exotic pets, (besides the animals in the zoo, of course). It wasn’t unusual to see a hawk hopping throughout the house, or a baby lion being nursed. But what was once a beautifully strange and fulfilling way of life turned to a life of survival […]
The Book Thief: Just as good the second time around
This was a reread, so I’m going to share both my initial thoughts, and my input after another, and more recent, look. My first review (2011): I wish I could give this book 10 stars. I had actually started this book once before and couldn’t get into it for some reason. I am SO glad to have given it another chance because this definitely is now on my list of favorite books of all time. I’ve learned about the Holocaust and read literature by survivors […]
Next time, more history less theory, please
Funny story: a number of years ago I read Blackout by Connie Willis, one of my favorite authors. I really love Connie Willis, even though there have been some disappointments (Remake is way too obvious and Promised Land. . .I don’t even want to talk about it). But when she’s on, I’m nuts for her writing. Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which are curiously tied together by a time-travel theme and some shared characters, are two of my favorite contemporary novels, in spite of them being very […]
Do you ever find yourself climbing into an open grave during a bombing raid and just wish you’d stayed in bed?
“Hollow City” is the second book in the “Peculiar Children” series, picking up immediately where the first book left off without much catch-up exposition. As I continued reading the series, my feelings got darker and more desperate, in line with the experience of the characters. There is very little hope or joy in Jacob Portman’s journey. He is a young man who answers the call, and then just plugs away at all the minutiae of being a hero. It’s not that it’s a chore to […]
Mary Jane-ing the Pacific Theatre, one atoll at a time
There are good war novels, and there are bad war novels. And occasionally, a well-intentioned reader like myself gets saddled with an excruciating mess like Never Too Old to Cry. This is a fictionalized memoir of D. G. McWilliams, a veteran of the 1st Marine Division, which fought in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. McWilliams’ endeavor was to try to document the war from a very intimate perspective, primarily through the eyes of a small cadre of Marine recruits. Paramount among them […]
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