Gena's comments (member since May 28, 2009)

Gena's comments from the Books on the Nightstand group.

I read The Book Thief a couple of months ago and had much the same reaction to it as you, Michael. It is an outstanding book.

Two YA novels on the subject that moved me as a kid were Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene and Gentlehands by M. E. Kerr. I've since reread Summer of My German Soldier and can confirm that it's a powerful read for an adult, too. Not really a Holocaust novel, but rather a portrait of a devastatingly lonely Jewish girl in rural Arkansas who befriends an escaped German POW. I stayed up all night to finish it, crying and crying and crying.

Gentlehands, if I remember correctly, is about a boy growing up in the 1970s whose beloved, erudite grandfather is accused by the community of Nazi war crimes. Again, not a Holocaust novel per se, but more about how the collective psychological wounds of that era are passed down through generations. I just read a more recent WWII YA novel on a similar subject: Tamar by Mal Peet, which moves between a romantic drama played out by Dutch resistance fighters during the War, and a modern teenage girl's attempt to piece together that narrative in order to understand her late grandfather, one of the members of the resistance. A really beautiful book.

Dottie wrote: "Gena check out The Proust Project group begun by BOTNS's own Suzanne as she tackles reading all of In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past."

Many thanks -- I will definitely do that.

Swann's Way! Finally!

Hi Ann, Michael, and everyone else! I just listened to a few episodes of the podcast yesterday and thought, These are people I'd like to have over for drinks and book talk.

I'm an English professor in the process of moving from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Hamilton, Ontario. My professional field is 18th-century British lit, but I try to keep up a constant stream of extracurricular reading -- mostly novels -- so I don't become one of those weird academics who disavow their own culture.

The last three books I read were Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy, Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin, and The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon. Today I'm starting Joan Didion's The White Album at the insistence of my husband, who cannot believe I've never read Joan Didion.