The Boy In Striped Pyjamas
The Boy in Striped Pyjamas
by John Boyne
240 pages
Fiction, History- Holocaust
David Fickling Books
This book isn't really about a boy in striped pyjamas, it is, but really it isn't. It is really about the other side of the coin, and portraying a picture to the reader that will never be forgotten. I have thought about how to do this book review, and what to include and I have arrived at the conclusion that the less the possible reader knows before snatching up The Boy in Striped Pyjamas the better.
Even the back of the audiobook I have aims to be extremely vague, saying they "think that it would spoil the listening (or reading)" in the giving away of this plot and story. I completely agree that this is a book that you need to read cold-turkey. Reviews are good in most cases, but not in this one. Because each time you read a review, a little chip of the innocence of Bruno is chipped away, because you know what he doesn't even know of his father. Oh yes, that will surely happen even as the novel unfolds, but I think I need to let the author chip away- because he does it with an incredible disarming perfection.
I walked away from this book with tears in my eyes, and fire in my heart. What could bring about this type of treatment of other people? The Boy in Striped Pyjamas just cannot be reviewed with accuracy without being of detriment to the surprise and intrigue of the book. I will not ruin this read for you, I wouldn't dream of it. This is one of the best books I have ever read, if that isn't enough to get you to read it...I won't jeopardize the impact of it on your life for a good review at B&b ex libris. This is one you just have to read! A perfect recipient of my Stellar Five Chicken Book Award. Yep, all the cluckin' is really worth a read of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I bet you'll cluck too!!
Spoiler alert!!!
If you want to read the novel cold turkey, you should stop reading here. Go, enjoy the novel and read the rest of this after.
Author John Boyne lecture/interview:
At the end of the audio book there was an amazing interview with author John Boyne, the following words are not direct quotes, but I did jot them down as I listened to the interview, I tried to stick as close to what the authors actual words were, but these are more like scattered notes after listening to an amazing lecture. I just love them so much that I have to share with you:
There is only one normal judgment to come away with when you think of the holocaust.
A story placed at a terrible location, at a terrible time. But this is a novel. Any story requires the willing suspension of disbelief, this story is like a nightmare and the reader can feel what is coming. The older you are, the more you know and the more fearful and real it seems. To come away from the book, annoyed by the different parts is thus minimizing the bigger questions that this novel raises is a failure to see the impact of this atrocity on us as a humanity.
The Boy in Striped Pyjamas shows a juxtaposition of extreme evil and extreme naietivity. Also to deal with the complacency of the people, during the 1940's. Groups of jewish people were walking through local villages, starving and being tormented these people were known as Hitler's willing executioners. They didn't step in, didn't try to bring change. Would you have done anything to stop it? You'd like to think you would, but millions of people just like you were caught up in the complacency and didn't make a move to stop anything happening on the other side of the fence.
John Boyne hopes that this is a starting point for children that they will want to stand up and say, why did that happen? And that then they will want to read more about the severity when they are old enough.
Movie Adaptation of The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas: I haven't seen this yet, but I a dying to. I am waiting on my husband (B) to read the book, which is hard for him to do when he has a month left in the completion of his masters thesis. Soon I will get to see it.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by Jaime Ford
304 pages
Fiction
Ballantine Books
(January 27, 2009)
In Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jaime Ford creates not just a book about the issues surrounding the Japanese living in the US. during the relocation period of WWII, but he creates an entrancing and dynamic family and ethic relationship, by the end of which your nails will be bitten down to stubs. This is a novel, based on the historical facts of treatment of Japanese immigrants (including those of Japanese ancestry) who were living in the Seattle area during that period, but it would be so bland to let it lie there. Yes, it would, that is just the historical backdrop for a tale that is so much deeper, and more personable.
Henry, the son of Chinese immigrants befriends a lovely American girl of Japanese ancestry. Although she is a second generation American, and does not speak Japanese, she is the enemy not just to other Americans, but to Henry's father as well. He grew up in China at war with Japan and holds on to incidences of mistreatment towards his own people in the hands of the Japanese against Keiko. Through years of stubbornness, dominion and silence Henry learns to find his own way of surviving, of thinking and feeling. He comes to the understanding that what is most important is that he look out for those he loves, no matter what.
The things that really allowed me to immerse myself in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet were the deep relationships, the strong writing of Jaime Ford, my love of all thins Japanese, that I am completely interested in history, that the book is based in the Northwestern United States (where I live), and the depth of the characters. I loved Henry, Keiko, Sheldon, Marty and well, I guess actually each of the characters, even the ones with bitterness and regret. I somehow felt like I understood their actions, their mindset and although not in agreement with them I could see through the words on the page to people of flesh and bone.
It is a love story in so many ways but not just a fleeting romantic love, but a love that stands the time it takes to reach it, and that spoke to me. It is the story of first love, and the story of a love that endures and is faithful, the story of love between father and son, mother and son. It never felt gushy to me, but I am a girl so hold that lightly. I don't know...I guess you'll just have to read it, and I really hope that you will because this was a STELLAR FIVE CHICKEN BOOK! I guess that means that Jaime Ford has to do a happy chicken dance? :)
Here are some pictures of posters that were plastered on all the walls in the Japanese section of Seattle in the 1940's:
Newspapers showing headlines written during the displacement of the Japanese people:
Rounding them up and putting them on trains headed to 'inland' camps (supposedly for THEIR own protection!):
Trailer by Jaime Ford about his book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet:
Trailer on the historical background of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet:
The Book Thief
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
560 Pages
YA Literature, Holocaust
Stellar Five Chicken Award Book
I knew this was going to be good before I started reading it. Sometimes that makes me jaded and I don't enjoy a book as much as I could have, it is almost as if it has been ruined by expectations of how it was going to be good and if it isn't good in those ways I am let down and disappointed. The Book Thief was good enough, in all areas that that wasn't a problem, it was well rounded and real, honest and humble and yet Zusak took those leaps that jumped it into greatness. It could have been just good, it covered a strong subject matter and that could have been just good enough, but I felt he pushed beyond all that and catapulted The Book Thief to go down in history.
I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so cover your ears and hum if you want to read this and you haven't read it yet. No, I won't spoil it. But one thing that I can tell you is that the omniscient narrator is death, or an angel of death. I thought that sounded too spooky before reading it but it really isn't. It is real, it is life- that death comes to us all.
Spoiler
I couldn't and still cannot get over the ending, or the last phrase in the book, "I am haunted by humans" (p. 550) I loved what this conveyed to me, what it made me understand. Several times throughout the book the narrator speaks of thinks that should be beautiful as ugly, and he uses the word 'ugly' in strange ways throughout The Book Thief. I came to understand thoguh, that this last phrase of the book is both good and bad, he is haunted by our beauty and attracted to the good that we can do, and also by the harm we cause each other, the pain.
Death is what we tend to fear, death is scary and cold but for me the point of the book was that what are fellow humans can do to us is worse than death, worse than uncertainty. I thought it was also interesting because death is attracted to humans, he has a job in life and has a need to perform when death comes to people, he is programmed and just does that. The beautiful side of humans is that we do have a free choice, a will and we get to make the call between walking in beauty and walking in brutality. It makes both extremes so much more severe because we do not HAVE to do either, we choose good, or bad and our choices affect those around us even if we don't want them to.
Spoiler end
The perfect ending to me is that which Zusak leaves unsaid- to have an ending where you just close the book sit in silence and think of all the immensity of it all. That is what a good book, great book should do to you. That is why I believe The Book Thief is one of the best books I have ever read, I'd say in my top 5 now. And that is saying a lot coming from me, since I abhor jumping on any sort of bandwagon. Heaven help me!
What about you do you automatically try to dislike things that EVERYONE else likes? Or do you just not read them or watch them? I still haven't seen the Titanic (yep the one with Leo DiCaprio) I am stubborn, and the only reason I haven't see it is that, well I didn't want to jump on that bandwagon!! (I was much more hardcore in high school!) Do you do that or is it just me?
I give it my biggest two thumbs up, and all the clucking it deserves with Dreadlock Girl's own Stellar Five Chicken Book Award!
The Hiding Place
The Hiding Place
by Corrie Ten Boom (with John and Elizabeth Sherrill)
246 Pages
Memoir
Stellar Five Chicken Book Award
This is not a book of someone who was persecuted, although that would be enough of a story for sure, The Hiding Place is a book about a family, and even more than that a community chose to put themselves in danger in order to save those who were hunted during WW2. There are books that are a pleasure to read because they are all about happy and good times, this is not that book, not at all. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom is a book which shows that truly no matter where you are, no matter what the circumstances that surround you you can persevere. Oh, no certainly not on your own, but by the power of Jesus Christ!
Her life was pretty much a normal spinster life up until the age of 50. Corrie was living with her
elderly father ( a watchmaker) and her sister in house/watchmaker shop in Holland. Then the occupation of the German Nazis took hold of Holland, fear permeated people, made them live differently, out of fear they followed. But this book is not about those who followed the fear, but about those who rose above it, not fearing for their own lives. Carrie, her father and sister filled the house with Jews, Corrie because the ring leader for the anti- Nazi underground. She put herself, her family in what would seem to be unnecessary danger of death, torture and imprisonment because she, although not Jewish believed that all people are just as valuable. Corrie held church services for the mentally handicapped, she found beds for the elderly, and welcomed danger by filling her home with Jewish friends, and those who would become their family.
The most impacting thing is that Corrie shows weakness, she doubts, she fears, she gripes, she is selfish and then she realizes it is wrong. It is through Corrie's weakness that you can see the greater plan for her, the big picture of how weakness, is turned to strength and all for the glory of God. To find joy in living with fleas?? To find peace in a concentration camp? To see the goodness of a Nazi soldier? Oh, that is not even the half of it!! You have to read the book to find out just how incredible it all is.
If I could show you my copy of the book, the dog eared pages would show you that this is a must read. My mother-in-law selected it for this month for our in town book club (which meets tomorrow). She reads it allowed every year to her junior high students. I know why she does.
I loved this for so many good reasons. The Hiding Place is a book on forgiveness, on forgiving because since we need forgiveness, we need to give it, no matter who needs it. In Corrie's case it was the Nazis, and even more heartbreaking, their own people who turned them in. Forgiveness is not something that anyone deserves, yet it is what we have to give.
I am truly moved beyond words by the strength in this book, I still can't get over how hard it would have been, in a time where one's own survival was a primal instinct, to overcome that and know that you will suffer, but that the worst that they can do is to send you to heaven. Corrie's story is one that I will never forget, I have not doubt.
There is a richness of quotes in this book, here are some:
Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings,Corrie. It's something we make inside ourselves (p. 33)
Lord Jesus, I offer myself for Your people. In anyway. Any place. Any time (p. 74).
Together we said aloud:
"War".
It was five hours after the Prime Minister's speech. How long we clung together, listening, I do not know. The bombing seemed mostly to be coming from the direction of the airport. At last we tiptoed uncertainly to our Tante Jans's front room. The glowing sky lit the room with a strange brilliance. The chairs, the mahogany bookcase, the old upright piano, all pulsed with an eerie light.
Betsie and I knelt down by the piano bench. For what seemed to be hours we prayed for our country, for the dead and injured tonight, for the Queen. And then, incredibly, Betsie began to pray for the Germans, up there in the planes, caught in the fist of the giant evil loose in Germany. I looked at my sister kneeling beside me in the light of burning Holland. "Oh Lord, " I whispered, "listen to Betsie, not me, because I cannot pray for those men at all"(p. 62)
The Beje (pronounced bay-yay).
Schematic drawing of the tilting, centuries-old house
still to be found in the center of Haarlem, Holland.
This is Corrie Ten Boom's bedroom in which the "hiding place" or secret room is built. You can see there is a little entrance to get into it in the bottom of the closet, and the wall is broken now for museum purposes, but it was built especially to harbor Jews during the occupation of Holland.
Winner of Dreadlock Girl's own Stellar Five Chicken Book Award, only given to those that are the cream of the crop!
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Authors: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Pages: 275
Yearly Count: 52
A novel told through letters, from this person to that, back and forth. I had never read anything written like this before, and while I had a huge learning curve initially to remember who was who and who was writing to whom and why, I LOVED The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I know, isn't that a mouthload of a title!? But it makes you wonderfully curious, right? It did me, and I am so happy I filled my craving to read this novel.
In January of 1946, Juliet, an author in London, begins to correspond with the society's members through a fun fluke, by which one member gets a hold of her address. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is formed of an eclectic, group of down-to-reality people who decided to have a Literary society during the recent German occupation as a cover up at first- but that only lasted a short day before they all came to love literature fully, even if it was in their own individual way!
I think this will be one we hear of for a long time, it is very cleaver, witty, funny, and beautifully precocious. I came to love the society of people, admire them for the difficulties they endured during the German occupation, while growing to support eachother and form a tight group. I enjoyed the writing, and novel in the form of letters was so entirely new that I was so thankful I picked this one up! It completely shook me of my recent "I am overwhelmed by what I am reading" issue. Ya gotta grab this one! :) Enjoy.
None of us had any experience with literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns speaking about the books we'd read. t he star, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the same book themselves. Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight (p. 51).
Ha, ha!! I just have to laugh looking at that quote....is that what are book blogging society is like!?!?! I love that, it is such a wonderful quote and I can fully relate. I always want people to read the books that I have read and then we can discuss them :)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Author Annie Barrows Website
And here are two trailers:
Have you read and reviewed it, give me your link! (pretty please?)
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