The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow

This book by Krystyna Chiger and Daniel Paisner is the memoir of Krystyna taking place in a World War II Lyov, Ukraine. It is from the point of the view of the 7 year old Krystyna and tells the harrowing tale of her families journey from a beautiful Ukraine, to Russian occupation, to the anti-Semitic German occupation, and back to the communist Russian occupation. 


Krystyna was the daughter of two fairly well-off parents who ran a fabric store. In her early childhood she wanted for nothing and lived in a big house in a then lively Lyov. It tells of having to share her home with others during the Soviet Occupation to having to move around and hiding when the German's took over. The family was eventually forced to move into the sewers and depend on the kindness of 3 sewer workers. It is the tale of this family and the others that fled with them. 


This memoir tells the story from a child's point of view with added perspectives of her fathers words. I think this gives it an innocent and open-minded quality. I always enjoy books that are from a perspective that you might not have expected and stay true to that perspective and isn't jaded or changed by age or experience. 


The only negatives I would say about this book is there was repetition of parts of the story and sometimes the flow of the story wasn't as smooth as I would have liked. I appreciate that this woman shared her story with the world and that I learnt a bit more about history and human condition in the process. 


I would recommend this book to anyone who can handle a sad read and likes to learn a bit in the process. I would give this book a 7 out of 10. 

Stephen Fry in America

I wouldn't probably have picked up this book on my own but it was recommended by a friend, and I'm glad I read it. It was refreshing to read an open-minded view of travels and cultures in the USA rather than the anti-American opinions that I've run into a lot living in the UK. 

Stephen travels throughout the USA east to west in driving his black cab. I enjoyed that he didn't necessarily concentrate on the big tourist places you would expect him to visit but on smaller and more culturally diverse places and events. Although I liked reading and learning a bit about different places the book could be a bit slow sometimes. Also the country is so big that there wasn't time to write too much on many of the places (including Wisconsin!)

The best bits were when he was taking about the music in the south, visiting a prison in the south, and his views on American patriotism. It is definitely worth a read whether you are American, British, or from anywhere else. It is always nice to hear a different perspective. I would give this book a 7 out of 10. 

100 books to read before you die

Every once in awhile I go back to the thought that I should be reading more classic books again. In high school and college I used to be quite stern with myself and would read a classic book between the more contemporary and throw-away novels. In this spirit I'm going to take a look at which books I've read on the list of 100 books you should read before you die. The ones that I've read are in bold.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling 

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold 

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So as of right now I've read 37 of the 100 books. Let's see how I do from now on!

Miral

At the Amsterdam airport I picked up the novel Miral by Rula Jebreal. I liked that the back said that it was based on a true story and portrays a pretty specular woman who started an orphanage and school in Jerusalem amongst the backdrop of strife between the Jewish and Muslims.

The story was different than I expected because I thought that the entire story would center around the character of Hind, the motivated and influential woman who made the orphanage and school (Dar-El-Teifel)out of nothing. Instead the story has many characters and the plot spans many years. The actual main character, Miral, is an impulsive and outgoing girl and from her eyes we see the protests around the political and religious fighting of that time.

I enjoyed the interesting mix of characters and the author's descriptions of Jerusalem at that time. I particularly enjoyed the good hearted Jamal and of course the level-headed and inspiring Hind. I'm not sure about the validity of the story or the general history that accompanies it but I do feel like I now have some insight into that city and views of a young Muslim girl at that time.

I would recommend giving it a read because any story that gives you look into another culture and time can teach something and open your eyes. Also! it is being made into a movie... so let's see how that goes :)

The Language of Flowers

I just finished The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.

To say that I finished it in the past 3 days on my holiday (which is as busy as always) should tell you that I liked it :)

I thought it was unique from any novel that I've read before. The story is about a young girl coming out of care and the challenges she faces with her identity, facing her past, and becoming a woman. The story in itself is layed out in an interesting way, going back and forth between the past and the present and not divulging too much information to fast as the story unfolds.

The unique bit comes in with flowers component of the story. The main character, Victoria, has learned the meanings of different flowers in the context of romance and emotions. It comes from the idea that different colored roses each have a different message... but this goes further to saying that any flower in existence has a meaning and it is possible to share your emotions with someone you care about (or don't).I felt that this is interwoven delicately throughout the story enhancing it rather than taking from the original story line.

The characters are strong without having to delve too much into individual histories and are a great supported to a complicated main character.

I thought is a was a really good book and a great book in it's genre.. as it has a bit more to sink your teeth into than an ordinary literary drama.

So my advice is to check it out!

One Day- David Nicholls

It's the book a lot of people are talking about since the rumors started about the film version. I had picked the book up a few times in the book shop read the back and decided not to get it. I'm not proud to say this but unknowingly... I bought this book due to it having a different cover, the film version cover. It wasn't until after I finished did I realize that it was the same orange and white covered book that I'd picked up so many times before.

In this instance I'm glad that my affinity for books turned movie has pushed me. I really enjoyed the book :)

As I'm sure you've seen in the movie trailer or read in the numerous magazine articles now out about this book/film... this is the story of two friends, Emma and Dexter, and their story over the period of 20 years. It is a complicated web of friendship, love, humor, growing up, following your dreams, and picking yourself up. It is interesting in the concept of popping into both of their lives on the same day of each year and the author manages to make their situations understandable and the story flow despite the time lapses.

My favorite part of any book or film are the relationships and how people interact individually or as part of a group. This story played into that for me including surprisingly few characters but tapping into Emma and Dexter's emotions individually and towards each other.

I'm not sure how to write entirely how I feel about the book without giving too much away so I will stop here. You'll hear from me again soon after I see the film ;)

Water for Elephants

When in Wisconsin I found the book 'Water for Elephants' by Sara Gruen in a used book shop. I was really excited because I really want to see the movie that was recently out... and I'm not gonna hide that it is because I love Robert Pattinson! I was wonderfully surprised to find that I also LOVED the book.

I really liked the characters and that it is set in a circus. It was not what I expected about a circus story but instead a entirely other perspective. It is the side of the circus that you normally don't see and is set in the times of the traveling circus. It's the stories of the people who set up the tents and feed the tigers and about the juxpostion of the performers and workmen. I appreciate the work that the author did to research that culture at that time and the characters that came out of that. The circus being set during the prohibition also adds an interesting element to the story.

The array of characters was sensational. So many different personalities in this misfit group and the lead character's sense of right and wrong running through the interactions makes for excellent reading.A moody ringmaster, an angry clown, a caring horse performer, and an elephant with a language barrier just to name a few. I also really liked the two different time periods. The crotchety old man who had such a history made me smile. His spunkiness and outlook were entertaining and it was a great perspective on a life.

I'm not gonna say much more other than you should definitely read this book if you haven't and I'm even more excited to see the film!!