false 14 872 646 true 5886215 read 3 true 2321387 currently-reading 223 true 2321386 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/61889942 to: The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle, #3) by Libba Bray
I admit that I tore through most of the 800+ conclusion of the Gemma Doyle trilogy in one day, but in part because I just wanted to be through with it. The final installment is more gripping than the second and less than the first; overall, the trilogy seems to unravel rather than develop. In this oversized final volume, the plot and the world-building tend to get in each other's way. Still, the historical details are fun, as the book goes on, it figures out how to use "magic" as a device for narrating adolescent sexuality. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59552974 to: Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive and Moist Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose (How Books: Haggis-On-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance) by Doris Haggis-on-Whey
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59552966 to: Giraffes? Giraffes! (Hardcover) by Doris Haggis-on-Whey
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59552359 to: Animals of the Ocean, in Particular the Giant Squid (How) by Doris Haggis-on-Whey
Like the first two volumes of The Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance, Vol. 3: Animals of the Ocean, In Particular the Giant Squid is essential to any respectable gentleperson's library. This volume is full of necessary information, including How to Know if One Is Being Eaten, the basic tenets of Shark Religion, and The Adventure of Gunther, The Lanternfish Who Wanted to Scope Out This One Part of This Cool Coral Reef Real Quick. Only for those unafraid of the truth. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/57627902 Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time: Book 1)(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Marcel Proust
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/57744931 to: The White Album (Paperback) by Joan Didion
Didion writes perfect essays. The opening, eponymous essay in this collection considers writing about one's own history as a necessary pathology. The pieces that follow are all excellent. Particularly good are "The Women's Movement," which takes a scalpel to the popularization of feminism, extracting the moments in which political insight morphs into domestic fantasy, and the short "On the Morning After the Sixties," in which she observes of her generation, the last to attend college before the 1960s, "I think now that we were the last generation to identify with adults." Devastatingly intelligent. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/58273729 to: The Mysterious Benedict Society (Hardcover) by Trenton Lee Stewart
1123072 Who knew Adorno & Horkheimer's theory of the Culture Industry would be so much fun told as a conspiracy-adventure for children? ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/121107-what-should-michael-read-re-the-holocaust Gena made a comment in 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. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/16991.The_Proust_Project Gena joined the The Proust Project group. ]]>