I finally got around to reading this acclaimed novel.
Zusak intended it for the young adult market, yet the language is sophisticated. Almost poetic. He’s an excellent writer.
Quite original. The narrator is death.
Most people love the book but I wasn’t totally won over.
It’s about a young girl living in a small town near Munich with her adoptive German family during the Nazi era.
Taught to read by her kind-hearted foster father, the girl begins “borrowing” books and sharing them with the Jewish refugee being sheltered by her foster parents in their home …
It’s about Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), the orphaned 12-year-old daughter of German communist activists, taken in by a middle-aged couple in 1938.
She and the smitten boy next door Rudy (Nico Liersch) join the Hitler Youth and goose-step around town burning books and fetishising der Führer as little twinges of conscience and doubt slowly begin to manifest themselves.
Then her adoptive parents Hans and Rosa (Geoffrey Rush, all twinkly grandpa, and Emily Watson, super-grouchy but with a heart of gold) take in and hide the Jewish son of the man who saved Hans’s life in the Great War. …
After a mass shooting at a local high school, Decker is asked to assist in solving the case by the local police force he used to work for. It soon becomes apparent that the shooting is somehow related to the killing of his family 18 months before. …
I did enjoy the book. It kept me guessing.
That said, I probably won’t continue with Decker. He’s just not compelling enough for me.
But I assumed Cline’s second book would be great as well.
Armada is a science fiction novel (2015) … is about a teenager who plays an online video game about defending against an alien invasion, only to find out that the game is a simulator to prepare him and people around the world for defending against an actual alien invasion.
Right away I wondered if it would be an inferior version of Ender’s Game.
It’s Ender’s Game with a twist.
Similar to Ready Player it’s about Gamer kids and retro Pop Culture. That part I liked.
Sci Fi technology I liked.
But the plot — set over one day — is stupid. Not believable in the way I found Ready Player believable.
GoodReads has it only 3.5 stars despite big hype on release. I agreed with Ariel:
Believe me when I say I was ready to love this book. Ready Player One was so great! And this was about video games and alien invasions! I jumped in to Armada ready to be caught by an awesome net..
.. and instead fell flat on my face. On concrete. And then a piano fell on me.
Having not had family or friends die stupidly, needlessly in war, I’ve gotten complacent about just how horrible it can be.
The true story of Louis Zamperini should be a lesson to us all.
UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand is a fantastic book.
In late May 1943, the B-24 carrying the 26-year-old Zamperini went down over the Pacific.
For nearly seven weeks — longer, Hillenbrand believes, than any other such instance in recorded history — Zamperini and his pilot managed to survive on a fragile raft. They traveled 2,000 miles, only to land in a series of Japanese prison camps, where, for the next two years, Zamperini underwent a whole new set of tortures. …
Zamperini grew up in Torrance, Calif., a juvenile delinquent saved by sport. He developed into a world-class runner who eventually competed at the 1936 Olympics where he asked Hitler for a photo.
The author believes Zamperini MIGHT have been first to break the 4 minute mile if he had had a little more time training.
The bulk of the story is two and a half years as a prisoner of war in three brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
Mutsuhiro Watanabe – nicknamed by his prisoners as “the Bird” – was the psychopath who tortured Zamperini.
Less than 2% of Americans held in German prisoner of war camps died. It was 30-40% mortality in the Japanese camps.
Stop worrying about Russia. It’s the richest of the rich deciding American politics.
Charles and David Koch started as Libertarians. In fact, David ran in 1980 as candidate for Vice President for the Libertarian Party. In recent decades everything the Kochs do is to enrich themselves. #FollowTheMoney
The Kochs will cheat, lie, steal, intimidate to enrich themselves. The GOP are merely a means to an end.
The Kochs are good businessmen, employing many. For all the hundreds of millions they’ve spent, mostly on Republicans, they’ve made more back on legislation enriching the richest of the rich.
The 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made the situation much worse.
Because their business is mostly Petrotoxins, the Kochs are keenest on preventing action on climate change.
Currently Americans for Prosperity is the main Koch lobbyist.
The E.P.A. identified Koch Industries in 2012 as the single biggest producer of toxic waste in the United States.
The U.S. political system is a fail, I’d say.
40% think Trump is doing a good job. A majority of those, I’m guessing, believe what they hear on FOX News and right wing radio.
Americans so easily misled deserve worse education, worse health care, medical bankruptcy, etc. … There’s no helping people like that.
I keep thinking American voters will figure out the richest of the rich are taking too much money. They don’t
In 2016, Doubleday published Mayer’s fourth book, Dark Money, which became an instant national best-seller, and the New York Times named it one of the ten best books of the year. …
Mayer revealed that approximately six investigators, led by former New York Police Chief Howard Safir, had been hired by the industrialist Koch brothers in an effort to try to dig up dirt in order to smear her reputation, and that accusations of plagiarism had been leveled at her. She responded by publicly airing those tactics of intimidation, effectively debunking the smear campaign.
Set in a future where humanity has colonized the Solar System, … they unravel a conspiracy that threatens peace in the system and the survival of humanity.
It also deals with the fractious relationship between Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). The OPA is an organization that fights for the interests of inhabitants of the (Asteroid) Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Unrecognized as a governing body, the OPA is often accused of outlaw tactics and terrorism. …
For me it’s the 6th book in his historical fiction series starting chronologically in the 12th century with the Kingsbridge series.
Each of the 6 books got better, I’d say.
I learned a lot. Kennedy and King were critically important for human rights in the USA, yet both were flawed men.
Edge of Eternity tells the story of the third generation of families developed in the first two novels and located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Russia during the height of the Cold War.
The 5th in his series of historical novels. Each one better than the last, I’d say.
I’m keener on history as it approaches my own lifetime.
click for larger version
Winter of the World, published 2012, is the second book in the Century Trilogy.
Revolving about a family saga that covers the interrelated experiences of American, Russian, German and British families during the 20th century.
The novel follows the second generation of those families, born to the main characters of the first novel, Fall of Giants, and is followed by a generation of those families in the third and final book in the series, Edge of Eternity. …
… the rise of Nazism, the ascent of Franco in Spain, the short-lived growth of British fascism, Action T4, the Battle of Moscow, the Blitz, the Normandy landings, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the development of the atom bomb, the fall of Berlin and many more. The families, spread across four countries, are related to each other though they themselves aren’t often aware of it. …
Always against war, this historical novel reminds me why. War is Hell.
I’ve already downloaded — free as an audio book from the Calgary Public Library — Edge of Eternity.
The Messenger (2002) … was released in the United States under the name I Am the Messenger.
Rick McCharles 