Last weekend, we had a great discussion surrounding City of Thieves by David Benioff, and several people recommended further reading about WWII. And so, we compiled this- a list of books surrounding the theme of WWII. These are NOT books we're strictly reading for club; rather, they are recommendations from fellow readers. Enjoy! Feel free to add others in comments.
1. Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi (from Tracy)
2. The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow by Krystyna Chiger and Daniel Paisner (from Stacy)
3. The Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah (from Kiersten)
4. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany by Robert Gellately (from Kiersten)
5. Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, WWII, and the Heart of Our Country by Modrus Elestein (from Kiersten)
And, two books that we've already read as a book club but that we highly recommend for anyone that wasn't around yet:
6. Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Lauren Hillenbrand (from the archives)
7. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (from the archives)
One last note- the US movie premiere date of The Book Thief has changed multiple times, but most recently I can tell it was changed BACK to Nov 15th. Sorry for correcting you Tracy- I'm not sure why the date has changed, but the Zusak said it was November, so I'm trusting him.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
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Also, For Those I loved by Martin Gray. Here is a snip from Amazon about the book:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --George Santayana
We need only to look back to Rwanda, and now to Darfur, to see that once again we are living the worst of times. Who better to guide our understanding and give us hope than Martin Gray--a man who survived the worst of times, flourished, and still managed to find joy in living?
Martin has come full circle since his boyhood world was turned upside down by the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Overnight, the teenage Martin and his family were immersed in the horrors of the Holocaust and held captive in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was a nightmare of brutality, starvation, and death. Martin became a clever smuggler to help his family survive--until the "butchers" of Treblinka took his mother and brothers. Against impossible odds, Martin survived and returned to fight in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. As the Nazis incinerated the ghetto, he escaped to fight with the partisans, and then the Red Army.
One more suggestion, if you are intrigued by stories of survivial: The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz.
Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag along with other captive Poles, Finns, Ukranians, Czechs, Greeks, and even a few English, French, and American unfortunates who had been caught up in the fighting. A year later, he and six comrades from various countries escaped from a labor camp in Yakutsk and made their way, on foot, thousands of miles south to British India, where Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army and fought against the Germans. The Long Walk recounts that adventure, which is surely one of the most curious treks in history.
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