Comparative history

This is the first in a 5-part blog entry at Blog Around the Clock by the blogger's mom, who was a Jewish child in eastern Europe during the Holocaust. She describes deprivation, fear, loss of parents.

I read this only a few days after finishing Stones in the River by Ursula Hegi. This novel is about a German citizen's view of the Nazi period, about deprivation, fear and loss. The main character is a sympathetic one, a dwarf or Zwerg in German, and thus, an outsider or object of Nazi disdain. She and her father hid Jewish friends and strangers. I have usually found myself, as a Jew, unsympathetic toward the German people of this time but this book forced me to look at some of them differently.

I was struck by the willingness of even the good guys to accommodate to the early Nazi restrictions on their freedom and it made me think about how we are accommodating the imfringement on our own freedoms as Americans now. Don't get me wrong. I know the most fascist members of our current government pale in comparison to the Nazis BUT the rhetoric of today is so reminiscent of the early rhetoric of the Nazis.

The good Germans came to regret letting their freedoms lapse, wishing they had stood up to the local bullies. I hope someday we do not feel the same way. I heard some commentator on the radio over the weekend say that the good thing about democracy is that the people get to change their minds after 4 or 8 years. I think it is time for a mind change. WAIT! I didn't use the c-word, did I? Noooooo. Mind, uh, uh, permutation. PRM

Triple 8 Reading Challenge

Read 8 books from 8 categories in 2008

Biographies/Memoirs
1. *Let Me Finish by Roger Angell
2. *The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein
3. *American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
4. *I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Crystal Zevon
5. *The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
6. *A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
7. *Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks
8. *The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor by Ken Silverstein

Travel
1. *Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck
2. Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
3. The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
4. *Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything.. by Elizabeth Gilbert
5. *American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
6. Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon
7. Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold by Michael Benanev
8. * Majic Bus by Douglas Brinkley

American Novelists
1. * Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
2. * Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
3. *Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer
4. * Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
5. * The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
6. *Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
7. *Pontoon by Garrison Keillor
8. *Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Foreign Novelists
1. * Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
2. * Waiting by Ha Jin
3. * The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar
4. * The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
5. * People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
6. * Atonement by Ian McEwan
7. * Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi
8. *Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porochista Khakpour


Young Adult
1.* Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdock
2.* Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
3.* Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
4.* Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis
5. * Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate
6. * Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis
7. * An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
8. * Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

Immigrant Experience
1. *How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
2. *Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porochista Khakpour
3. *Madame Secretary by Madeline Albright
4. *Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate
5. *The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Dias
6.
7.
8.

Nonfiction that Just Calls My Name
1. *Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. *Empires Lost and Won: The Spanish Heritage in the Southwest by Albert Marrin
3. *The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle
4. *Madame Secretary by Madeline Albright
5. *Math Phobia by Marilyn Burns
6. *The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan
7. *Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
8. *Outside Lies Magic by John Stilgoe

Local Book Club List
1. * Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi
2. * Atonement by Ian McEwan
3. * The Tattoed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates
4. * Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
5. * Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
6. * Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
7. * The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
8. * The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan
9. * The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

* completed

Possible substitutions
North Toward Home by Willie Morris
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Children of Jihad by Jared Cohen
Tamar by Mal Peet