Book Lovers Club
Comments
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Finished All the Light We Cannot See - most excellent! Read it if you haven't yet.
Also recommend The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna. Historical fiction about German POWs working farms in Door County WI in 1944.
http://www.wpr.org/story-wisconsins-german-pows-piece-hidden-history-author-says
Had the book in TBR pile then saw this show about Door County on Wis Public TV.
http://video.wpt.org/video/2365789900/
(edit to swap link from partial story to full story-the Cherryland story starts at 31:35)
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Badger - I just re-read All The Light You Cannot See. I agree. Excellent.
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I loved both All the Light We Cannot See and The Little Paris Bookshop.
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Just finished another Leslie Glass book - Stealing Time from 2000. I really like her series about NYPD officer April Woo. At age 30, April still lives in NY China Town with her parents who won't speak English. And she has a growing romantic attachment with another officer, a "foreigner" (meaning not Chinese, but in this case Hispanic). "A masterful police procedural...wonderfully rich portrait of smart, sensible, intrepid, stubborn April Woo....." "The themes of shame, guilt, and familial obedience make it work.." There is so much insight into other cultures and how they relate to each other & the police & how women are treated. Note: if you google her, this is not the exotic actress w/the same name.
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Almost finished reading ISIS Apocalypse. With 40 pages of references, it is a well documented history of ISIS over the past decade. While I doubt that many of you might be interested in reading the book, I cannot find enough accolades for it. It is written in easy to understand language, that is, despite being written by a scholar, the ideas are made understandable to many of us who don't have degrees in Middle Eastern Studies. I won't say that reading the book is enjoyable. However, it is an important book about an important subject.
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VR!!! interview with Geoff Dyer in the NYT 6/30???!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/books/review/geo.../review&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Book%20Review&pgtype=article
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jel! Thanks! I read it yesterday! Could you believe the breathe of the types of books he reads??? Yikes!
Meanwhile, I loved reading White Sands. He is such a character! His essay about The Northern Lights is hilarious! Having now met him twice, I would now really like to meet his wife. In an earlier book of his, he mentions meeting her at a gallery, where she was working. On the spur of the moment, he invited her to Burning Man. Not knowing a thing about it, she agreed to go! Bless her! Not even my own sister-in-law would accompany my brother to his annual Burning Man trek! And The Northern Lights in winter? That wife of his is a keeper!😇
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Jel: I too enjoyed the Geoff Dyer piece and felt less alone when he wrote that he did not understand everything in the book "At the Existentialist Cafe' but nonetheless has been influenced by those great philosophers. It is raining here in the desert today, so I may just sit down and reread parts of the ...existentialist café again and ponder.
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Oh my, what a great link Jelson. Thanks.
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It is my pleasure to scout for links about Geoff Dyer for VR!!!
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jel! I am honored that you scout out Dyer links for me! That said, perhaps you enjoy his writing as much as I do and you are scouting them out for yourself to enjoy as well? I am such a rabid fan of his that my computer is set to automatically receive links to his name. What I really enjoy are videos of his interviews. Back in the day, around a decade ago, few videos of him being interviewed were easy to come by. Today, there are many to enjoy! I marvel at how nimble his mind and pen are. I'm so happy he is getting wide recognition..
On a sad note, I am sorry to hear about the passing of Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel. I will never forget how emotional I got while reading his book, Night. Tears stained the heavy pages of the light book. Finishing the book, I was emotionally exhausted for weeks. When I breathed, I could almost smell the burning flesh that he described. Sitting on my balcony now, in my reclining chair, enjoying the delightful comfortable air, listening to the leaves blow and my windchimes sound, while birds are chirping, I mourn Weisel's passing. Having given a voice to all of those who were not spared in the concentration camps, I feel it is my duty to appreciate more nature's beauty on behalf of all of those whose lives were cut short and unfulfilled. Their loss will always be humanity's loss.
RIP Mr. Weisel.
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Well said, VR. And what a light to the world he was! An interesting side note, one of my dad's friends was one of the soldiers who liberated Buchenwald. He (against orders) brought along a camera and took some of the pictures you see of those moments. This friend came home from the war, worked on the railroad, and it wasn't until after he retired that he began to speak at schools, to civic groups etc. about his experiences. He too felt the duty to witness to the truth. He and Wiesel re-met in those later years and were friends.
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I, like VR, have just finished a long tome. It took me several YEARS to get it done! It is called Herndon's Informants. After Abraham Lincoln was killed, his law partner, William Herndon, already recognizing his historical importance, sent research teams out across the country with the job of getting as much information as the could about the REAL Lincoln from just about anyone who ever knew him. For the next 25 years he collected oral histories, statements, letters etc. etc. and finally wrote a book, in which he used about 10% of the information gleaned. Until the research team put this book together, the only way to access the material was on microfilm in the Library of Congress. The researchers put the book together by the dates it was collected, left in the original spellings, added lots of footnotes & also added an explanation as to who the informers were. Lincoln's best friend's anecdotes might be colored one way by their relationship, a political rival's might have not so flattering tales, recollections collected later might be filtered by the passage of time. Very interesting (to me) but hard work too!
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Recently finished Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's concentration camp for women by Sarah Helm. For decades the story of Ravensbruck was hidden behind the Iron Curtain. Survivors within the Communist regimen were ordered not to talk about their experiences and some were actually prosecuted for "conspiring with the enemy" because a good Russian dies in battle, not taken prisoner.
The author managed to find and interview many survivors or survivors' children. Hidden letters were brought out. A massive amount of research by the author. There were some Jews in the camp, especially at the end of the world when prisoners were moved from other camps with the approach of the Red Army,, but most of the prisoners were Communists or resistors, or "asocials", like prostitutes or the homeless or Gypsies. Medical experiments were conducted there. Prisoners were shot to death, gassed and worked/starved to death. That any survived that hellhole is amazing and inspiring. A difficult read, but worth it.
With Holocaust survivors aging and dying off, I feel it is important to read this terrible chapter of history. "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
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Ruth...Candace Millard is coming out with a new book...in September! Churchill! Now I have to finish my summer reading ASAP and clear my deck and calendar....😇 Yay!!!!
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That should be good! I dragged out The Autobiography of Mark Twain (which I have had sitting there for several years.....it is HUGE). So far the first 62 pages have all been introduction & rather boring, so I don't know......I may shelve it again. I am also reading one about the various presidents as fathers which is pretty good so far. I going on vacation in a week & I have bought a couple 'beach reads', so will be switching over to some lighter fare shortly.
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ruth! That Twain book must be a dust collector by now....I was thinking of starting the three volume book on Primo Levi, but I keep getting cold feet....over 2000 pages!
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This is just volume one & there is over 700 pages
......I am skimming for the parts that are interesting to me. It isn't in the normal autobiographical form, so far it is random stories about various people & events.0 -
Saw The Free State of Jones movie and thought it was quite good. Apparently there are 9 books on this little known part of history. And there is an article in March's Smithsonian magazine about it also.
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got a kindle online reader and have been reading adrift in soho. colin wilson was published in 1961 and I guess a recent reprint or I would have read it long ago. young man from the midlands comes to london. well read but with very little money he ends up homeless but with many just met friends.
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Abigail....looks like a film, based on the book, is expected to be released this year! Sounds like a wonderful book! I'm looking forward to the film's release!
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I thought you might like to see this picture. The soldier in the center Sgt. Runyon Peterson, my dad's friend. According to my brother it was taken hours he smashed down the gates at Buchenwald with his jeep (I am not sure about that part because I never heard that before & my brother has a tendency to spice up his stories). The wavy-haired 16 year old boy looking gratefully at Runyon is Elie Wiesel.
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Amazing photo Ruth! Thank you for sharing it and the story. It seems very poignant to me on this day especially.
A far cry from the neighborhood bubbas drinking beer and shooting off fireworks in their driveway all day. All weekend. Ugh. Need earplugs.
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wow!😘
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wow, Ruth, thanks for sharing the photo.
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Ruth - even if it's embellished, it's a wonderful story & photo. My brother tends to do the same with past history.
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The composition of the photo makes me think of a Renaissance pieta or something by Rembrandt - it is really extraordinary. Elie Wiesel expressing gratitude, the young person in the right foreground expressing despair and exhaustion and everyone and everything that has been destroyed, and the child with the big cap expressing the future, lets get on with it.
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Just finished The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian (author of Midwives). The book is very skillfully interwoven with the protagonists of The Great Gatsby - and hypothesizes that one of the characters is actually the son of Daisy Buchanan & Jay Gatsby. Great empathy with the homeless and discussions about the nature of obsession & mental illness. It "bounces between the Roaring 20s and the 21st century and between Jazz Age Long Island and rural New England". It's a good read with a totally surprising & wrenching twist at the end. How do we decide what we choose to remember as well as what we forget?
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Oohhh, that sounds interesting!
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