Reading
Ooh! I finished Fall of Giants and started the second book in the series, Winter of the World. This one starts in 1933, with the Nazis coming to power in Germany. To be honest, I hated it so much I almost stopped reading. There are some things that are horrifying and yet still kind of fun to read about- Hitler is not one of them. The first few chapters made me feel sick and infuriated- but I told myself to stop being a wimp and read on. Sure enough, before long the storyline switched to America and I’ve been reading that part happily. I know we’ll get back to the Nazis, and I’m steeling myself. And I know the book overall will be great- I just have to stop being so sensitive. Sheesh. From a historical perspective, Germany in the 1930s is fascinating (remember how I couldn’t stop talking about WWI when I read the first book? I’m having the same problem now with WWII.) The German people in the early 1930s didn’t have the perspective that we do now. The Nazis were just another fringe political party- most people didn’t love them, but they didn’t fear them as much as they feared the communists. Also, the 1920s were a pretty terrible decade for Germany. It wasn’t completely unreasonable to think that democracy just wasn’t working. Hitler gave a lot of people hope with his “Make Germany Great Again” speeches (huh! That reminds me of something, but I can’t think what…) Hitler and his thugs did seem a little dangerous, but I can imagine people thinking “How bad could it really be?” (VERY BAD! Assassinate him! Flee the country! Don’t let this happen!!!) Ahem. You can see how I have a hard time reading it, but I know I’ll love the book overall. Before I started Winter of the World, I read this book: This is the first book I’ve read all year that I did NOT like. I’ve been on a Japanese murder mystery kick, and the other ones I read were pretty good. They tend to be very light on character development, but strong on ingenious solutions. This book had NO interesting characters, and the ending, instead of being ingenious, was preposterous. Plus, there were important plot points that were unavailable to the reader until the end. That’s not fair! Who made this book a “classic”, anyway??? What awards did it win? I think I’m through with this genre. Lastly… I read Allison’s guest post on Engie’s blog. Allison shared a list of her favorite horror books. Horror is one genre I’ve never been interested in, but Allison has convinced me! I’m going to pick a couple from her list and try them. Sophie Hannah’s The Orphan Choir seems like a good place to start. Do you ever read horror? Is there a subject that just just can’t stand to read about?