Recent reads.
>> Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. John Boyne. The story is told from the naive eyes of a 9 year old German boy who is moved from his lush Berlin home to a temporary house outside of Out-With (Auschwitz, which is one of the many words he mispronounces). This book is a controversial one, as the boy's naiveté and general ignorance of what was happening around him really irritates people that have been fighting Holocaust deniers for the greater part of their lives. I agree that this is a dangerous line to walk, but I liked Boyne for that. What can I say, I like danger, I like controversy. Plus it was precious to see how his young brain tried to grasp such evil, even if the realism of the story is questionable. Plus the ending rocked. I laughed, I cried, I liked it. And then I watched the movie. Liked that too.
Read it and decide for yourself if Boyne took a good chance here or if the book is a "profanation" as it has been called by critics. Mostly I am just waiting for Ethan to read it, so I can hear how pissed off he gets. Just do it Ethan, it's a short read.
The Other Hand (published in the US as Little Bee). Chris Cleave. This one pleasantly surprised me. I guess that's because I was a bit skeptical and didn't really have any expectations. Hard to have any really, especially when the back of the book says only "We don't want to tell you what happens in this book...we don't want to spoil it" and you bought it based on the cover design. I guessed it was a marketing trick, but I knowingly fell for it in the bookstore. And I was not disappointed.
We meet Little Bee in a Refugee Detention Center after she has narrowly escaped from violence in her homeland of Nigeria. She tries to "speak English like the Queen" and make a life for herself in England. She seeks out the only English people she knows, whom she met tragically while they were on vacation in her home country. The story was powerful, beautifully and poetically written and explored topics that will hopefully be a part of my career someday (I want to work with refugees).
Most of all, I loved it because it reinforces something we all know and something by which I try to live my life: we all have something to learn from each other, despite where we come from, what language we speak or the color of our skin. I laughed, I cried, I liked it.
The Book Thief. Markus Zusak. Elisa sent me this book for my birthday, and a great present it was. Again, powerfully and poetically written, with intense and complex characters that I fell in love with immediately. Plus, how often is it that you get to read a story told by Death? And would you ever expect to like said narrator? I almost feel like I lost touch with Death a bit in the middle when the Book Thief's story really took over, but luckily, he was always lurking so I didn't miss him too much. I mean the book is set in WWII after all, so he had a lot to do. It was equally uplifting as it was devastating. The style was refreshing, with super short chapters, not your typical foreshadowing and really not too many surprises. Death let us in on his doings. I laughed, I cried, I liked it. I thank Elisa for it and I recommend it.
Now I'm reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a.k.a Menn som Hater Kvinner. So far I've read only about twenty pages or so and I haven't felt the gravitational pull yet... but am looking forward to getting caught up in it.
I am thinking for the rest of this month I will spend more time painting than reading. Or at least that's a thought...
6 comments:
I should of read the first book instead of watching the movie..ugh. I didn't like it that much. I will look into your other books:)
Interesting take on The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Tanita has a radically different opinion on it.
Of course, she wasn't reading it for enjoyment...
I bought The Boy in Striped Pajamas in Spanish in Madrid while waiting for my (very) delayed Ryan Air flight to Dublin. It was really good!
I'm also interested to hear what Ethan has to say, but I honestly didn't think the book's portrayal of the situation was that far off.
I keep hearing things like "kids aren't stupid" and "he was nine, not four, he should have had questions". Kids AREN'T stupid. But here's the thing--at that age, kids are at a point developmentally where they are just beginning to understand how they interact with the larger world. At that point, many kids are just beginning to understand that they are a small fish in a big pond, rather than the biggest fish in a small pond. So kids may NOT have good understandings of things that don't happen directly to them.
Really, very little of what happened in Boy With the Striped Pajamas happened directly to Bruno, and of the things that did, I found that he DID seem to be pretty quizzical about it all (i.e. why did the cook used to be a doctor, and why wasn't he anymore?). Yes, Bruno was pretty naïve, but well within the range of "normal" for that age, in my humble opinion.
Here's another example: in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, the narrator is 12. He's much less sheltered than Bruno was, and he STILL has a difficult time understanding what's going on with the internment camps until someone close to him is placed in one. Even then, he has a lot of guidance from adults before he really understands the implications of it all.
This makes sense to me on both accounts, because it is totally feasible given their developmental milestones.
Anyway...I have Little Bee checked out from the library right now, and it's next on my "to read" list. Your cover is way cooler than mine, and yes, sometimes I pick books just because of the cover.
If everybody read as much as you, all the bookshops would be empty! From your descriptions I'd choose "The boy in striped pyjamas" first, although it seems that there's a lot of grief in it.
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