Unbroken: A World War Two Story of Survival, Resiliance, and Redemption

Title: Unbroken
Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Rating: Two Stars OR 5 Starts


I just finished this book today, and I am not sure whether to rate it as a 2 or a 5.

This book recites the harrowing details of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner turned POW survivor. It depicts his life from birth until his now 90's- including shaking the hand of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 games in Berlin, his divine survival from 47 days of drifting in the Pacific Ocean on a raft, and turning to Christ to learn how to forgive his tormentors after surviving a Japanese POW camp.

Laura Hillenbrand is brilliant in her story-telling. I felt like I grew up with Zamperini as a close friend, and later that I was in Japan experiencing the torture that befell the POW's. That was the greatness and the difficulty of this novel.

Louis' story must be read. His story must live on forever- for us to remember not only all that we owe to so many men and women who lost their lives not only in WWII but in all other wars that have been fought, but also to remember the horrendous viciousness that occurs during war so that we can avoid it in the future. That is why it deserves a 5-star rating: a brilliantly told true story of a great war hero that should never be forgotten.

However, this is an incredibly difficult read. It embodies everything I dislike about WWII literature: I hate reading that there are people on this earth who are so cruel as to enjoy the severe suffering of others. In WWII, the Japanese were satanic in their punishments to their captives, and this book does not hold back in the retelling of the torture. The images of what they inflicted on other human beings makes me literally ill- and it was hard to read. Based on the subject matter and the perfect imagery that Hillenbrand created of this most despicable behavior, I want to rate it a 2- meaning, this is an incredibly hard read.

I really do believe every American should read this novel- it should be required reading in High School. But, I will never read it again. And if a movie comes out, I will skip that as well.

Has this review confused you enough?

The Irresistible Revolution

The Irresistible Revolutioun: Living Life As An Ordinary Radical
By: Shane Claiborne

I am not exactly sure how to describe this book.

Revolutionary? Probably.
Thought provoking? Definitely.
Life-Changing? Hopefully.

This is a book about a man who is trying to live his life as closely as Christ would have him live as possible. That means, to him, that he goes to Calcutta to serve with Mother Theresa. He goes to Iraq to serve the victims of the war. He opens up a "community" house in the ghettos of Philadelphia where the homeless and the lonely are welcome. He dedicates his life to serving the poor- and in this book he teaches us the things he has learned along the way.

I found that he eloquently expresses many of the things that I have always felt. For example, he takes on the Christian Right for not only turning Christianity into politics, but in boiling Christianity to two issues: sex and abortion, while ignoring so many other tenets of the life Christ lived. This is something that has always bothered me, and I am glad somebody finally spoke up against it.

That is not to say that Shane is a democrat. In fact, he despises the democrats just as much.  He calls himself "anti-politics" and on the 2004 ballot he wrote "Jesus" as the write-in candidate.

So this book is not about politics- though it is mentioned.

It is more a book about how we, as a society, have veered from the path that Christ would have us lead.

The book leaves you wondering not what it means to be Christian, but what it  means to be a follower of Christ- and whether or not we, as supposed Christians, are living up to that ideal.

He talked about a survey he took of several hundred Christians. He asked them if Christ walked with and helped the poor. 80% said yes. Later in the survey, he asked if they had actually walked with the poor and physically served the poor. Only 2% said yes.

He says we, as a society, have set up layers so we don't actually have to interact with the poor- we can donate our money to our charity and feel good about ourselves, but we don't actually come in contact with a homeless person to understand their circumstances and understand why they are in this situation. He insists that if we did, poverty would end as we would literally open up our coffers to help those in need- just as Jesus has asked us to do, but so many of us are unwilling to actually do.

He quotes Gandhi who said, "I like your Christ. But I do not like your Christians- they are so unlike your Christ."

Many of his thoughts are things I have thought for years, and it is refreshing to see somebody live his life in exact preciseness to how he felt Christ lived. He doesn't just talk the talk- he walks the walk.

I live in the suburbs with my spare bedrooms and extra mattresses while there are single mothers with children sleeping under bridges.

So now this book has left me wondering: What can I do to truly serve the poor? Not just donate money- but actually serve them face to face. To let them change me- to change my heart- so that I become a better disciple of Christ.

Finding the answer is my next quest.

(I should point out that I do not agree with everything he says- I do not agree with all of his Biblical interpretations, and I certainly do not agree that he is a prophet, as some of his followers do. But, the overall message I do agree with, and that is why I highly recommend this book)

In a dark, dark wood...Can You See What I See? On a Scary Scary Night by Walter Wick

I'm a big fan of the I Spy series, especially this one released last year by Walter Wick. Set to the tune of In a dark, dark wood.... our story begins outside a village with a grand castle in view. Each set piece and page moves us closer to solving the riddle, to the village, to a building in that village, to the stairs, a cabinet, an item in the cabinet - okay you get the picture, until the set is so small, so intricately photographed. It's amazing! The details are spectacular. The riddles are of course, excellent, and yes, some items are a challenge to find - even for smart adults, and not so smart ones like me. This is a great Halloween read for kids, and adults looking for some spooky fun this October! It's on Amazon here.

My second favorite would be the original I Spy Spooky Night. Our copy of this is barely hanging on by a thread it's been looked over so much, and I only bring it out in October! Again the pictures are fun and rich with the kind of details that fanciful dreams are made of.

I guess that's why I like these books so much. They remind me of being a kid, when things were simpler. They encourage imagination and wonder, and as an added bonus, they make us use our brains by tricking us into learning how to problem solve, how to think outside the box.

Perfect for kids and adults this time of year.

5 stars

Anyone else have a favorite Halloween read for kids? I'm always looking for new ones to add to our haunted library.

Helluva Halloween Challenge

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

"The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human."

Adolf Hitler

Probably the most powerful narrative I've ever read about the Holocaust, the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Complete Maus should be required reading in high school. It should be required reading before entering the Holocaust museum in D.C.

Written and illustrated in graphic novel form, Art Spiegelman has related the history of his Jewish parents and their horrific experiences during WWII with tiny pictures. Pictures and words that impact your very soul.

Told through the eyes of himself, the child of survivors, and his father, Vladek Spiegelman, Maus begins, and is interspersed with, an account of his relationship with his father in Vladek's later years, and then travels back in time, to Poland in the 1930's as his father remembers in great detail what happened to his mother, his brother, and the rest of his family during the war.

I cried.

It was gut-wrenching.
It was horrific.
It was interesting and historical.
When discussing his current relationship with his father, it was even funny.

To look at its cover, you'd have no idea of the epic beneath. A comic book about the Holocaust, who would've thought? The perfect outlet for adults and especially children to learn about one of the most tragic events in world history.

In an age where the term "Nazi" is thrown around like the word "the" nowadays, a book like this brings back the harsh reality of the insurmountable error of using a term that caused such misery and suffering to millions upon millions of people, and not just them, but their descendants.

This book is a triumph to the human spirit and what we are capable of enduring and surviving as a human race. Probably the best book I've read so far this year.

5 stars

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

by Lisa See

This novel follows the life of 80-year-old Lily in 19th century China. It centers around her relationship with her Lao-Tung (best friend) Snow Flower and the circumstances of their lives since childhood. It includes their trials with foot binding, arranged marriages, the Taiping Rebellion, and the pressure to give birth to boys.

I LOVED this book and highly recommend it, especially if you are at all interested in Chinese culture and history. Lisa See is a captivating author, and I found myself unable to put this book down. She vividly described the lives of these girls in such a way that I could literally feel their pain and picture exactly what they were going through. Rarely do I find a book that grabs my attention from the first page all the way through the end, but this book accomplished it. 5 of 5- easily.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

by David Grann

This is the true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett who led several expeditions into the Amazon in the early 1900's to help better map out the border between Bolivia and Brazil. The current belief at the time was that the Amazon couldn't have housed a large civilized society (like the golden city of El Dorado that so many before Percy had searched for), that only small tribes could survive in such a region. Through his many explorations Fawcett began to believe otherwise.

In 1925 he headed out again with two other men (one being his 21-year-old son) looking for this lost city he dubbed Z. He believed he knew where to look after years of research and experience and that he would make one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history.

The group simply vanished. What happened to Fawcett? Did they die from starvation? Did illness finally get the better of him and his group? Or were they kidnapped or killed by some of the hostile tribes in the area?

Many have gone searching to see if they could find out what happened to Fawcett's expedition or to find his lost city of Z. Many have died in the search, been captured by tribes or went missing, just like Fawcett.

The author begins his research and finds previously unknown information on where Fawcett went and ends up going into the jungle himself to see what he can uncover about the "greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century." Does he discover what happened to Fawcett? Does he find the lost city of Z?

This is a great book that I highly recommend. I found it to be extremely interesting. I thought the author did a very good job of jumping between the past and the present to tell us the tale of Fawcett and his own personal journey into the Amazon. The novel is full of interesting details about Percy's life and his expeditions. I can't believe anyone survived going into the Amazon and would keep going back. The illnesses you could catch so easily were horrible! I also liked hearing about the author's own personal research and journey.

5 stars

A side note: Apparently Brad Pitt has bought the rights to the book and plans on making a movie out of it. It should be a good one!

The Caliph's House

By Tahir Shah

Tahir Shah has a lot of good reasons for moving to Morocco. He wants to escape England and the rat race. He wants to recapture the magic of his own childhood vacations in Morocco. He wants to learn more about the grandfather that had died there years ago. He wants a house to renovate, one that will allow his delusions of grandeur to run wild.

Shah gets all of that and more when he buys a crumbling palace, Dar Khalifa (The Caliph’s House) in Casablanca. He also gets three guardians (they come with the house). He gets an architect with a zeal for destruction and little interest in renovation. He gets an assistant, Kamal, that he doesn’t trust and doesn’t particularly like, but needs desperately. But mostly, he gets Jinns. Lots of them. And it turns out that jinns, invisible and usually malign spirits, can cause a lot of problems. Whether you believe in them or not is irrelevant.

The resulting (nonfiction!) book, The Caliph’s House, is a delight, a thoroughly entertaining description of Shah’s first year in Morocco. The characters he meets are almost unbelievably eccentric, like those in a zany comedy movie but all the more interesting because they’re real. His adventures are often laugh-out-loud hilarious. His first night in his new home, Shah has his very first run-in with jinns…in the toilet. Kamal manages to obtain a refund from the useless architect by throwing a feast. Shah’s world map is condemned by the censorship police because Western Sahara isn’t in the same color as Morocco. I laughed so much that my husband forbade me to read in bed when he was trying to sleep.

Best of all, the whole time I was laughing, I was learning. This book was, for me, a fascinating glimpse into a culture very different from our own. Moroccans have rich superstitions and traditions that infuse every aspect of their lives. Shah skillfully illuminates facets of Arab culture that, in this era of post-9/11 paranoia, we seldom see or bother to consider. He doesn’t ignore the fanatics; they’re there, lurking in the fringes of his narrative, but they don’t seem to have much of an influence on daily Casablanca life. I, for one, didn’t miss them.

In spite of frustrations and challenges, Shah comes to love Morocco and its people, warts and all. He lives there to this day. Having read this book, a part of me (a very, very small part of me) longs to join him.

This book does have some objectionable words, but in the context in which they appeared, they were usually pretty darn funny. 5 stars.

Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer

I have an embarrassing confession. I’m so excited I’m giddy like a school girl, and I’m also apparently dumb like one. Until recently, I’d never heard of Georgette Heyer. See, told you – dumb. I had no idea of how many books she’d written on Regency England, about 60 I think, and I, who claim to love an excellent classic historical romance, have never read even one of her books. Not – one.

Have I been living in a hole these last 3 decades, stuck in an Austen, Bronte rut the size and scope of my pan-handled state? And so I would still be if not for my occasional scanning of the reading bloggernacle where I recently found a lone review of this book, Black Sheep. Be still my beating heart. This is an excellent book. And I almost took it back to the library unread, shameful, wicked girl!

Miss Abigail Wendover is our 28-year-old heroine who lives in Bath with her much older, often thinks herself ill sister, Selina and their 18-year-old ward and niece Fanny. Abby is quite settled in her life, where she is both nurse and confidant to her immediate family. Romance is the last thing on her mind. All remains unchanged until young Fanny thinks herself in love with a scandalous fortune hunter, a much older Mr. Stacy Calverleigh, and it falls to Abby to make Fanny see the light of this man’s true nature.

When Fanny and Selina remain unmoved in their undying devotion to this man, Abby, who fears there might be an elopement at any moment, enlists the help of an unlikely ally, Mr. Miles Calverleigh, the black sheep of the family and uncle of Stacy who has just returned from banishment in India. He, however has not the temperament or desire to become involved in the situation, but instead turns his attentions toward Abby, who secretly knows she’s met her match, but outright refuses to admit it all costs.

In case I haven't mentioned it enough, I really liked this book. It was written in the style of Jane Austen, but was much easier to read. Heyer has borrowed much from that great writer but in the end I couldn't have cared a wit. While the main characters were clever and sharp as a tack, it was the secondary characters as well, the nosy elderly neighbors, the friends of the family that gave this book real depth.

As I said I’ve not read any of Heyer’s other books so I’ve nothing to compare it to, but for a few days, I was able to escape back in time. No detail was left undone. I felt I was in Bath in the 1800’s. Miles Calverleigh now ranks very high on my list of outstanding male leads, and the ending – well, perfection, sigh... Truly, I can’t get back to the library fast enough. 5 stars***

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

by Gary D. Schmidt

This book was a very pleasant surprise for me. I checked it out at the library based on the author (who wrote The Wednesday Wars—fabulous book), also based on the fact that it was a Newbery Honor as well as a Printz Honor book. I certainly didn’t expect to like it as much as I did! It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story about 13 year-old Turner Ernest Buckminster III who moves to Phippsburg, Maine in 1912 where his father has been appointed the town minister. There is an island nearby where a small community of black people live, including Lizzie Bright Griffin who is close to Turner’s age. Turner doesn’t get along with anyone else in town, but he does form a closeness and friendship with Lizzie. The problem comes when the people of Phippsburg decide they need the land on Malaga Island for tourism to help their economy, and they want to force the black people to leave. The story is based on true events.

There are some great characters in the book, especially the old women in town. Turner is forced, as punishment, to play the organ for an old lady who is sure she will die anytime, so she keeps a paper and pen nearby so whoever is with her will record her last words as she is certain they will be prolific. Turner is careful not to play any songs that will encourage her to die. There are other well developed characters that I grew to love, hate, or feel sorry for.

This was a story that stuck with me and the more I think about it, the more I like it. I love books like that. There are some prime teaching moments for families about prejudice, courage, family, adversity. This is a beautiful story. I give it an A.