The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Started: June 24, 2012

Finished: June 28, 2012

Pages: 216

Format: Paperback, purchased at Border’s during its closing sale

Price: $8.99

I was reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas on the Metro this morning, and another rider asked me if I had seen the movie. That’s the kind of book it is, one that people will stop to ask about. For the record, I haven’t seen the movie.

I pretty much knew how it was going to end, because a former housemate spilled the beans after he read it. I spent the whole time reading it filled with a sense of dread and impending doom, as is appropriate for any book about the Holocaust.

The main character is a nine-year-old boy names Bruno, whose father is appointed commandant of Out-with, as it is called in the book. (He is appointed by The Fury, an apt name if ever there was one.)

Bruno is incredibly naïve, with no clue as to what is going on with all those people in striped pajamas who are on the other side of the fence near his house. He befriends one, Shmuel, whom he meets at when the other boy is sitting near a part of the fence that apparently is unpatrolled. The book strains credulity on that score, and on the issue of Bruno’s continuing cluelessness. At the same time, it’s chilling. Two young boys are caught up in the tragedy of the times, and neither has a clear understanding of what is going on or why.

This is a short, easy-to-read book and the story pulled me through. The author, John Boyne, does a good job of creating scenes and dialogue, and has an artful knack for the use of repetition. The writing style is simple enough for a child to read. In an interview included at the end of the book, he says that he doesn’t see a reason for distinguishing between books for children and adults. That makes sense to me because this book has a childlike style and sophisticated themes. I’m not sure it would be appropriate for a child to read or not, but it might make a good introduction to the Holocaust for children.

The cruelty of the situation is more hinted at than depicted. Bruno doesn’t like one of the soldiers who is always hanging around his house. He is mean and bullying to Bruno, which of course fits in perfectly with the way he treats the people on the other side of the fence, including Shmuel.

All of this makes for flat characters. It’s possible that even a Nazi soldier had good qualities, and in fact, it is more uncomfortable to think of these people in such a light. What separates us from them? What circumstances would prompt people – such as me – from becoming cruel and depraved? These are questions that aren’t addressed at all in the book. That’s not a lack, really. This is a book about innocence in the face of barbarity.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Author: Sarah Vowell
Started: 1.11.2012
Finished: 1.15.2012
Format: ebook

This was my initial take on The Partly Cloudy Patriot:

You know how when you’re at a party and the music switches from, say, Johnny Cash to the Beach Boys with no transition? That’s known as a bad mix.

After reading two heavy books – the Kurt Vonnegut bio and Anne Frank's diary – I was in the mood for something lighter. I decided to go with Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot. It’s been a bad mix.

I’ve read a lot of Sarah Vowell – Assassination Vacation, Unfamiliar Fishes, The Wordy Shipmates – and thoroughly enjoyed her quirky, irreverent take on history. But coming off Anne Frank, it is a little hard to take Sarah’s inability to entertain her family for five days without bitching and moaning. That’s the subject of the second essay in this book.

It’s not just that though. I fell in love not just with Anne’s story, but with her writing itself. And Sarah Vowell’s writing, in this instance at least, doesn’t hold a candle to Anne’s. Everyone complains about spending time with their families over the holidays. And Vowell’s take on this is comes off as whiny and grating, rather than fresh and interesting.

So much for my first take. It did get better. Vowell is at her best when she’s not writing about her family. Her view point on other issues, specifically politics and history, is lively and entertaining precisely because it is fresh. She seems to see things from a somewhat different angle than other people (or at least, other than I do), and that is what makes the writing interesting.

The best essay in the book, IMHO, is “Democracy and Things Like That.” It’s a story about a talk Al Gore gave to a media literacy class at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire. One of the students asked how Gore how high school students could become more involved in politics. In his response, Gore talked about a letter he had received 20 years earlier from a high school student in Tennessee about the funny taste of the water from the well her family used. Her father and grandfather were mysteriously ill. Gore called for a congressional investigation and a hearing, and “I looked around the country for other sites like that.” one of the sites he found was Love Canal in New York State (my home state). That led to a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites, “and it all happened because one high school student got involved.”

In a New York Times story about the event, Gore was quoted as saying, “I was the one that started it all.” That one misquote led to Gore being perceived as being grandiose, as taking credit unduly. It’s a shame because I think Gore is an honorable man, and he would have made a great, or at least good, president. We’ll never know.

I also liked Vowell’s take on her own patriotism. She is not one of the sunshine patriots so derided by Thomas Paine, but a partly cloudy patriot. And that I can understand.

The Book Party -- An Annual Tradition

A friend of mine gives a book party every year. About 30 people gather at her home for a pot luck dinner and a book swap. Each person brings a book – wrapped in plain brown paper, in most cases. Everyone draws a number and as each number is called, selects a book from the pile. As the books are unwrapped, the givers talk about the book, what they liked about it and why they selected it to bring to the party.

The party was last Saturday night. I brought And So it Goes, because it’s the best book I have read so far this year, in that it is the book that has stayed with me the most.

The book I got originally was the biography of Steve Jobs, which I had long ago decided not to read. When I opened it, though, I figured I would do so, since I'm not one to let a book go to waste. Then one of the other partygoers suggested trading, so I ended up with At Home by Bill Bryson. I’m a huge Bill Bryson fan and have read most of his books, but interestingly not this one. Thus far, the Bryson books that I’ve enjoyed the most are The Mother Tongue, a brief history of the English language, and a biography of William Shakespeare that I just loved. For me, it ended any doubt that Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare. At any rate, I already had a Bryson book on my nonfiction list so I might replace it with this one. Otherwise, I’ll save this one until I finish my list of 54. But it’s certainly hard to refrain from diving in to a Bryson book.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Started: 1.7.2012
Finished: 1.10.2012
Format: ebook
Price: $5.99

Is there anything new to say about “The Diary of a Young Girl?” Not much probably, since everyone on the planet seems to have read it already. And yet, I'll endeavor to do so.

I was supposed to read it in seventh or eighth grade but never finished it (sorry, Miss Barber!), because I don’t like reading diaries. (Which is somewhat strange considering that my strongest reading affinity is for biography. Go figure). That's not to say that I was unfamiliar with the story. Far from it. When in Amsterdam a number of years ago, the Secret Annex was my first stop.

At any rate, I’m glad that I waited this long to read Anne Frank’s famous diary. I would guess – and actually, hope – that I have a different perspective on it now than I would have at 13 or 14. Of course, it’s not insignificant that Anne’s diary tends to be assigned reading for students who are about the same age as she was when she and her family slipped into hiding. Reading it as an adult provides a different perspective.

I could tell that my perspective had changed because I found myself feeling sorry for Mr. Dussel, the dentist who joined the other seven residents of the Secret Annex a few months into their ordeal. What middle-aged man is going to welcome being cooped up with a moody, mouthy teenager who lives to make fun of the amount of time he spends in the bathroom?

At 13, I’m sure I related easily to the difficulties that Anne had with her mother. But at 53, this is one of the most poignant parts for me to read. I can’t help but wonder if Anne would have grown to treasure her mother once adolescent angst was behind her. And Anne’s belief that her mother really didn’t love her was belied by something that she never knew – that Edith Frank hastened her own death by saving her meager food for her beloved daughters, not being able to grasp that they had been taken away from her forever.

The hardest parts of the diary for me to read are the pages toward the end. Anne and the other Annex residents were aware that the end of the war nearing and it seems that she could almost taste the freedom she longed for so desperately. At the same time, she is clearly wary that something could go horribly, tragically wrong, as of course it did. In the end, the Franks and the other residents of the Secret Annex were on the last transport out of Holland to the concentration camps, where all but Anne’s beloved Pim met their deaths. One of the things that make this book so difficult to read is knowing the whole while that this lively voice is going to be snuffed out. But not silenced, and we have Otto Frank to thank for keeping his daughter’s memory, and words, alive.

I read once that when Mr. Frank was questioned about the diary – Did he know that his daughter was engaging in such profundities during their time in the Secret Annex? – he said no, that he hadn’t known that Anne was capable of writing what she wrote. Margot, maybe, but Anne? No. How sad that he was able to get to know his own daughter through her writings, but only after her death, in a world gone horribly wrong. And how brave and kind of him to share her story with the world entire.

And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields

And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields

Started: 12.30.2011 (I cheated by starting before the New Year, but I didn’t have anything else to read)
Finished: 1.7.2012 (approximately)
Format: Hardcover
Source: Borrowed from my housemate
Price: Free!

I went through a major Kurt Vonnegut phase in high school (doesn’t everyone?). I reveled in the dark humor, the strange characters, the bizarre names. These were signs, I thought, of a truly gifted writer.

That assessment wasn’t wrong, but it was incomplete, and this biography of Vonnegut explains why in great detail. Vonnegut was haunted by his experiences in World War II. In 1944, Vonnegut visited his family once last time before being shipped to Europe. While he was there, his mother committed suicide. On Mother’s Day.

Once in Europe, Vonnegut was captured by the Nazis almost immediately and sent to Dresden where he and the other prisoners were kept in a former slaughterhouse – Slaughterhouse Five. And then Dresden was firebombed. Who else to carry out the thousands of corpses and clear the debris but the POWs?

Many Dresden residents had taken shelter in their basements during the firebombing. In these cellars, the POWs found not only dead bodies, but also canned goods. One of the POWs took a can of green beans and stuffed it under his jacket. He was caught and executed. Vonnegut was among those detailed to dig the man’s grave in advance of the execution, then bury him once his body had dropped into the gaping hole.

How does a man readjust to peacetime when he has seen that level of carnage and cruelty? That really is the story of rest of Vonnegut’s life.

The author also critiques Vonnegut works at appropriate times throughout the book. He does a marvelous job of this. For that reason alone, the book is worth reading.

As I read this book, I thought of how Vonnegut kept that anger and horror over his wartime experiences bottled up, not sharing them with many people. His writing was the only real outlet he had, or at least allowed himself. I couldn’t help wondering about those other men who, like Vonnegut, dug bodies out of Dresden cellars, endured horrific abuse at the hands of their guards, then came back to a land of peace and plenty. What ways did all those other men deal with the horrors they had seen, the nightmares that may have plagued them? Did Vonnegut's writing make him one of the lucky ones?

Vonnegut made a great contribution to 20th century American literature. But I wish he had never had to, not that he would have addressed those demons in a different way, but that he wouldn’t’ have had demons to address.

Biblio Rapture Begins: The List, Part 1

New Year’s Resolutions. I make them every year and I break them with breathtaking speed. I suspect this is true of most people.

This year, though, I decided to try something new: come up with a reading list for the year. Originally I thought it should be 50 books, but I increased it to 54 because I’m turning 54 this year. Could there be a better way to celebrate that than by reading a book for every year of my existence? If your answer to that is no, you may be reading the wrong blog.

Can I do it? Who knows? But it will be fun to try.

The first step, of course, was to come up with a list. I put together a list of 27 nonfiction books pretty quickly, with only a little help from Publishers Weekly’s list of the best books of 2011. Fiction was more of a problem because I’m not that much of a fiction reader. When I feel the urge to read a novel, my tendency is to read To Kill A Mockingbird yet again or, somewhat less frequently, The Chosen. They pretty much say all I need to know about the fictional world. But part of the point of my list is to really devote myself to reading. I’ve always been a big reader (obviously, or I wouldn’t be committing myself to reading 54 books in a 12-month span). But selecting the fiction offerings required even more assistance of Publishers Weekly and a message to my Facebook friends, who kindly responded with enough recommendations to keep me going for a few years. I'm still not finished compiling that list though, so I'll post it at a later date.

All that said, here is The Nonfiction List, with some comments on why these books made The List. They are listed in the order in which I thought of them, not the order in which I will read them.I refuse to be held to any order on that score.

1. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand – Like almost everyone else I know, I loved Seabiscuit, and I’ve heard good things about this book.
2. Between Heaven & Mirth by James Martin – This is the only theological book on my list. I added it after reading the author’s “5 Myths About Christmas” in the Washington Post a few weeks ago.
3. And So it Goes: A Biography of Kurt Vonnegut by Charles J. Shields – I’ve always like biographies, I’ve read a lot of Vonnegut’s work, and I’ve heard good things about this book – three good reasons to add this to my list.
4. How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev– Well, really, shouldn’t everyone with a name like Siobhan read this book?
5. The Diary of Anne Frank – I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read this book, despite the fact that it was required reading when I was in seventh or eighth grade. Sorry, Miss Barber!
6. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz – I’m fascinated by the Civil War and a huge Tony Horwitz fan. That makes this one a twofer.
7. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David G. McCullough – I’ve heard great things about this book and liked what I read when I thumbed through it. I also liked McCullough’s bio of Harry Truman. This seems like a somewhat more fun topic.
8. A Train in Winter by Caroline Morehead – The Holocaust is a particular area of interest for me, and this one seems to have a somewhat unusual perspective. It has garnered somewhat mixed reader reviews on Amazon, but I’m adding it anyway.
9. An Invisible Thread by Laura Schoff – I stumbled up on this book on Amazon the other day and found it intriguing, so on the list it goes.
10 and 11. The Partly Cloudy Patriot and Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell – My best friend, Colleen, introduced me to Sarah Vowell’s writing with Unfamiliar Fishes and I’ve read most of her other books since then. These are the last two, except for Radio Days, which I’m not going to read.
12. The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism – I may drop this one because I don’t know how much reading about the Tea Party I can take.
13. Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff by Calvin Trillin – I was reading one of Trillin’s essays in the New Yorker recently and when I saw this in a bookstore, I decided it was a must read.
14. Mockingbird by Charles Shields – To Kill A Mockingbird is what I refer to as The Book I Read. I’ve read it hundreds of times and the characters are as familiar to me as family, and almost as beloved. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in 2012 re-reading, so I’m counting on this to soothe my longing for Atticus, Jem and Scout. I also added it when I saw on the cover of And So It Goes that Charles Shields had also written Mockingbird.
15. Sundown Towns – My sister got this for Christmas a couple of years ago, so I’m going to try to borrow it from her. It’s about the covenants that some towns set up to keep African Americans out. From what I gather, most of those towns were not in the South.
16. Guns, Germs & Steel – I’ve started to read this a couple of times and find its premise fascinating. This year, I’m going to make a commitment to actually reading it.
17. Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie. I like the story of Robert Massie. He became a biographer after his son was born with hemophilia, which led Massie to research the disease and the most famous hemophiliac in history, the Tzsarevich Alexei. That led him to write a biography of Alexei’s parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, and he’s been writing biographies of Russians ever since. I’ve already read the one of Peter the Great, so Catherine’s seemed like a logical next step. Besides, buying this book will help out the 82-year-old author, who is fretting about how he will fund the educations of his two youngest daughters, who are 11 and 13.
18. Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson – I am no fan of Hemingway but the reviews of this book sparked my interest.
19. Blue Nights by Joan Didion – I read A Year of Magical Thinking when it came out several years ago and was touched by its depiction of raw, consuming grief after the unexpected death of Didion’s husband. I think everyone can agree that there is no greater loss than that of a child, and I’m anticipating that Didion does justice to this tragic subject.
20. In the Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson – I’ve heard great things about this book, and as I mentioned earlier, the Holocaust is a subject that I turn to again and again. I’m a little unsure though. Everyone I know who has read it raves about Larson’s The Devil in the White City, but I hated it.
21. The Price of Civilization by Jeffrey Sachs – I’m not sure about this one. It is one of the most notable books of the year, according to Publisher’s Weekly. We’ll see.
22. Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Glidiner – Like the author of this memoir, I’m from upstate New York, although not particularly close to the falls (Niagara Falls, that is). And I’m about the same age. Also, my sister recommended it.  Sounds like a win-win-win to me!
23. Townie by Andre Dubus III – I chose this one because Publishers Weekly listed it among the notable books of 2011, and I needed to fill out my list.
24. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt – I was thumbing through this one at Barnes and Noble the other day and thought it might be a good read.
25. The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester – I so enjoyed The Professor and the Madman that I dove (so to speak) into Krakatoa last year. That was a much harder read, because, as I found while reading it, the author is a geologist by training and his book on the awful volcanic eruption was a bit more technical than I usually go for. Still, I love his writing style and the tenderness he brought to The Professor and the Madman, so I figured this would allow me to revel in both his writing and his love for the English language, which I share.
26. Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society by Bill Bryson -- What I treasure about Bill Bryson isn't just his keen wit, it's his unending intellectual curiosity. He seems to want to know everything about everything. That makes him a man after my own heart. But I'm no scientist or mathematician (full disclosure: I flunked algebra), so it will be interesting to see if I like this book. 

27. Boomerang by Michael Lewis -- I think that I read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, although it was a while ago, so I don't remember very clearly. This book focuses on the current global economic crisis. I'm probably going to need something uplifting after reading this one! Maybe I should read Between Heaven and Mirth as an antidote.