Thoughts On: ‘The Reader’

March 14th, 2010

Picking up The Reader I didn’t have a massive idea of what it was about, I knew it was set around a romance but I didn’t really know much more than that. I certainly didn’t expect what it to be what it was either, what a wonderful surprise. As a lover of history and trying to understand things that don’t always make sense this book touched on feelings I have often found myself pondering. I don’t know much about the history of German or WWII particularly well (I stopped studying it at 16), but to my surprise that really didn’t seem to matter. The Reader is poignant and heart wrenching, I adored it, I read it in one sitting, I couldn’t let myself put it down.

“The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading and shame in post-war Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany’s Nazi past and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: what should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? “We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable… Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?”"
- Amazon.co.uk

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Top Tunes …. February 2010

February 27th, 2010

Another eclectic month, I never realise how I flit from tune to tune until I come to write these blogs. I began a Glee-aholic, found a few tunes in between and am now obsessing over Yeasayer’s new album (which you should all get!)
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Thoughts On: ‘One Day’

February 20th, 2010

this year

I don’t enjoy romance, the soppy kind, the ‘I’ll love you forever and ever, my life is yours’ kind. Perhaps I just lack the proper emotions, but those romance novels just don’t do it for me. I enjoy unconventional romance, romance that is as real as possible and realistic to life’s up’s and downs, romance that makes your heart break over an everyday sort of love. ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls is the most wonderful love story I have read (besides Persuasion), there are no words strong or emotive enough for me to describe how much I now love this book. I was dubious as I began the first chapter, I didn’t enjoy how it began but as I read on through one day of each year of their lives (1988-2008) I began to love them and in the two days it took to read One Day Emma and Dexter became part of my life. I ended the novel devastated, but understanding, David Nicholls is truly a fantastic author.

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An Interlude

February 15th, 2010

a gentleman

Because sometimes it is better to laugh than to cry:

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
–Mark Twain

While what I do daily can in no way be described as particularly stressful or demanding, it does occasionally get me down. It gets to a point where idiots stop being funny and are just idiots. I was stumbling along, as you do, and came across this quote by Mark Twain. It is possibly the funniest thing I have encountered in a significant period of time.

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