Friday Book Club (August and September)

Well, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose on a year-long goal.  This month, I lost....didn't get my 2 books a month read in August and September.  I'm still confident that I can knock out 24 books this year...hopefully!  Anyway, the three books I did read were great.  Here's the scoop, linking up for Book Club Friday!

A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal

 I'm apparently on a World War II kick lately (remember Every Man Dies Alone?) with my reading.  Well this time it was A Lucky Child and I can't recommend this book high enough.  I couldn't put it down.  What's most amazing about it is that it's a true story.  You see Auschwitz and Sachenhausen and the horror of the Holocaust through the eyes of a 9 year old child.  His description of what he saw and experienced is heartwrenching.  You see the horror of the Nazi regime as it faced this child who was put through hell merely because his family was Jewish.  In the camps he was separated from his family.  He lost his grandparents, father, and many friends.  He was separated from his mother for years, before she finally found him in a Polish orphanage.  He watched his adopted siblings be hauled away and killed.  He heard the screams from the Auschwitz crematoriums.  He participated in the Auschwitz death march.  He saw people beaten, shot and hung before his eyes.  His story is unbelievable, except that it really happened.  There is no way that he should have survived these camps, but he did and he has spent his life working for international human rights.  He believes that doing so is his duty after seeing, and experiencing, what he did.

"It remains a part of me and seves as a reminder, not so much of my past, but of the obligation I deem incumbent on me, as a witness and survivor of Auschwitz, to fight the ideologies of hate and of racial and religious superiority that have for centuries caused so much suffering to mankind."

"It took a long time for me to realize that one cannot hope to protect mankind from crimes such as those that were visited upon us unless one sturggles to break the cycle of hatred and violence that invariably leads to ever more suffering by innocent human beings."

"I doubt that we would have been able to preserve our sanity had we remained consumed by hatred for the rest of our lives.  Many of our relatives and friends in America never understood what we meant when we tried to explain that, while it was important not to forget what happened to us in hte Holocaust, it was equally important not to hold hte descendants of hte perpetrators responsible for what was done to us, lest the cycle of hate and violence never end."

"This sense of obligation had its source in the belief, which grew stronger as the years passed, that those of us who survived the Holocaust owe it to those who perished in it to try to improve, each in our own way, the lives of others."



Morrie:  In His Own Words by Morrie Schwartz

You guys probably remember how much I loved Tuesdays with Morrie.  Well this book is a collection of little thoughts by Morrie himself.  He talks about living and dying and provides great advice on how to do both.  In the book, Morrie told the story of a young man, whose father died of ALS.  The young man told Morrie that his father had not talked much of his disease or fellings, but that by reading Morrie's story, he felt like he was hearing some of his father's secret thoughts.  I guess the reason I enjoyed this book (along with Tuesdays with Morrie and The Luckiest Man) is pretty much the same thing.  While I spent a lot of time with Mr. Franklin while he was going through ALS, we did not talk about his disease and I've often wondered how he felt or what he thought.  I think that Morrie's story gave me some insight that I needed to have.

"Be grateful you have been given the time to learn how to die."

"Maybe the distance between life and death isn't as great as you think."

I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

This book was given to me by my friend Nomad because he said the author reminded him of me.  I can tell you that I'm not even close to as clever as Sloane Crosley.  Holy cow.  This book is hilarious.  It's sort of a collection of essays and stories from her life.  I think that if I ever make my dream of writing a book come true, I might set it up like this.  There are stories about boyfriends giving her plastic ponies (yes, I have one too!), her being a Jewish girl playing the Virgin Mary at a church camp paegent, being a bridesmaid to someone she hardly ever spoke to, dating woes, her crazy family.  This book is an easy read and really, really funny.  Here is my favorite quote:

"Weddings are like the triathalon of female friendship:  the Shower, the Bachelorette Party, and the Main Event.  It's the Iron Woman and most people never make it through.  They fall off their bikes or choke on ocean water."