I’ve always been a bit of a history nerd, I believe I mentioned that when I reviewed Monuments Men. I love WW2 and it’s always interesting to hear about the women’s part in aiding their men. Have you seen Bletchley Circle? It’s a BBC show about women, who were code breakers in England during the war, who are now bored housewives solving crimes. Anyway. The Girls of Atomic City is the untold story of the women who went to work in Oak Ridge, TN on […]
An Unbelievable Story of Survival
Unbroken is one of those books that leaves you shaking your head at the atrocities that men have committed against men and women in war. There are moments in this book when I thought, how unlucky can this guy be, to go from one sadistic camp officer to another who is worse. The fact that any of the men interred in the prison camps described in this book is a testament to human resilience. The book is aptly subtitled. Unbroken is the life story of […]
War Is Never Over
Primo Levi’s memoir The Reawakening begins where his Survival in Auschwitz ended. It’s the last days of the WWII, and Levi is trying to stay alive in what passes for a hospital or sick bay in concentration camp. Levi, who committed suicide in 1987, was an Italian Jewish writer and a chemist. He was arrested in as a part of the Italian resistance in 1943, and to escape being shot as a partisan, he confessed to being Jewish, and after a short interment in Italy, […]
the Reader
I read several “popcorn” books this month and wanted to read something with a bit more substance; the Reader had been on my ‘to-read’ list since I purchased it at a book fair in August. Michael falls ill on his way home from school and is rescued by Frau Schmitz, after his recovery he goes to thank her and they begin a sexual relationship. During their affair 15-year-old Michael reads his school books to thirty-something Hanna, it’s part of their ritual: bath, sex, reading. They […]
A Tale for the Time Being
A Tale for the Time Being is a novel about Zen Buddhism, quantum physics, writers and readers, writer’s block and reader’s block, hate and love. It moves fluidly through the past and present and involves some dynamic and admirable female protagonists. Small wonder it was nominated for the 2013 Man Booker Prize (and should have won instead of The Luminaries). The narration moves back and forth between Ruth, a present-day middle-aged writer living on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, and Nao, […]
What happened to Harriet De Luce?
Wow, that wasn’t what I was expecting AT ALL. In a good way. For me, this is the best of the series. So, fair warning, this review will be chock-a-block full of spoilers, so stay away, far far away if you don’t want to get spoiled all to hell. Usually, I try not to put spoilers (at least, ones involving twists and resolutions of the plot) in my reviews, but in this case, it’s impossible to say what I want to say without talking about […]