Month: December 2018
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The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank [BOOK REVIEW]
★★★
We have all heard about or read this book. I remember reading it in high-school as a project. And since I never had written a proper book review, I decided to read it again.
I went to the library, and they only had the short Penguin version, with the most important diary entries of Anne Frank. It is only 65 pages. So, I decided to also grab another book – The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer, so I can write a full overview.
This is a diary of a young girl, and she was writing these stories during two years of hiding. Anne Frank and her family are jews and they live in The Netherlands. After the Germans invade, many people are captured and go to designated camps. A few manage to escape and go into hiding. Anne’s family hides in her father’s office.
If you are reading this diary, without knowing anything about history – this could be a happy story. These diary entries are filled with love and hope, dreams of a young girl, beliefs, opinions, descriptions of her first crush and planning a future.
But this is not a happy story. This girl doesn’t get the chance to grow up. This girl doesn’t get the chance to experience freedom, and live to get to know her grandchildren. This is a sad story of not just Anne Frank, but all these people that have gone through that painful journey.
While this book deserves to be read by every person, and this history needs to keep being told many years after us, I feel the need to make a proper book review.
This is not a well-written book, with a great plot and amazing description. So based on that, this doesn’t stand up to the standards. But this book has a meaning that makes up for all the amateur writing. After all, this was a teenager writing it, without even knowing this will someday be shared with the world.
To all of you that haven’t read it yet – I highly recommend it. If you don’t want to go with the long version, read the short Penguin one, like I did.
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The Psychology of Time Travel – Kate Mascarenhas [BOOK REVIEW]
★★★
I love the idea of time travelling and I love the idea of time travelling books. That is the main reason why I chose to read this ARC copy. The synopsis sounded intriguing, and the cover was gorgeous. I don’t have much experience reading time travelling books. I still believe the synopsis is intriguing and the cover is gorgeous, but I am not satisfied with the feelings this book left me, after I read the last chapter.
The story begins when four ladies in the early 1960s work together and build the first time travel machine. And they are surrounded by curious people and media, and one of them has a breakdown and is expelled from the project, as she is a risk to herself and others. But they don’t just exclude her from their project, but from their whole lives, and time travelling altogether.
”Sometimes we want proximity and a crowd gives us the excuse.”
And many years after, when time travelling is something everyone knows about, secrets start to be revealed, little by little, and a murder happens without explanation. A few young women, completely unrelated and with different missions will try to get their way into the whole time-travel business, and try to figure the answers to their questions.
In The Psychology of Time Travel, one is certain – you will flow through time and places like never before. One chapter it’s 1967, and the next one, it’s 2015. You will meet a lady and her young self, her old self, and her current self, all at one place, talking to each other, or simultaneously performing a dancing act. You will get to see a world very well created, a complex structure of how time travel might work, and details that you wouldn’t thought of checking twice.
I couldn’t connect to any character. Maybe there were too many. The chapters were very short, and they travelled through years so quickly, that I couldn’t catch up. Catching up with the plot of a book, and figuring out what is going on while being presented things so fast is very frustrating. It’s like watching a movie in a foreign language, the subtitles being your only way of gathering information, and they disappear instantly, without you having a chance to understand.
The romance in this book was another thing that bothered me. While we get a lot of romantic relationships going around, one particularly threw me off my feet. A love story where one girl is in love with another. This is the completely realistic part. But the unrealistic one was that one girl lives in the present, and the other is a time-traveller in the past – so even though they are currently (technically) the same age, in reality one is in the mid 20s, and the other in the mid 80s. I couldn’t process this, or agree with it.
”You couldn’t get involved with someone who spent most of their life in a different time period from you.”
I am sure I would have loved the characters, have I had more chances to get to know them. They showed signs of bravery, and goals and hopes for a better tomorrow, with a spark unlike any others. But it all lasted so short, before we switched to another character, and so on.
Even though this one didn’t work for me – I still encourage you to give it a go, if you are a fan of time travel. The idea of time travelling is very well done, and deserves to be discussed.
A huge thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books, for providing me an ARC copy of The Psychology of Time Travel in exchange for an honest review.
Here’s to better books, and here’s to a better tomorrow!
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The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman [BOOK REVIEW]
★★★★
I haven’t read much classic reads this year, and a few days before the end of 2018, I decided to go for a classic short story, and I chose The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
This classic has been written by a woman in the 19th century. A time when women weren’t treated the same way as today. A difficult time, where women couldn’t express their opinion as they wished, but they were suppressed by the male authority in the family.
When The Yellow Wallpaper came out, it was considered a Gothic Horror Tale. It is hard to believe for me, knowing the world we live in today, and how we, as women can express our opinions openly. But back in the days, this is how it was. It wasn’t easy for the woman, and I am glad we have a lot of brave women from that time, that gathered the courage to tell stories for the next generations.
This is a story about a woman, who seems to suffer of post-partum depression (a type of mood disorder associated with childbirth). She has been forced by her husband and doctor to stay in her room until she is ”mentally capable” again to take care of her baby. I am not a mother, but I can imagine the pain and suffering of not being allowed to see and hold your unborn child. And people thought this was okay?
The woman is constantly staring at the yellow wallpaper and the window, constantly reassuring herself that this is all happening for her own good, and that the husband and doctor know best, until a point where we are not actually sure if she is in her right mind anymore.
She starts to see a woman inside the wallpaper, and believes the woman is struggling to break free. I loved the metaphor used, as her subconscious knows she is trapped, and the end is so painful to read, but oh, so powerful.
Even though such a short read, The Yellow Wallpaper is an impressive view on cultural traditions, and the position of women in the family. A classic and a must-have for every woman!
Do you know any stories similar to this? I would love to explore them?
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Down The TBR Hole #12
Credit for this tag goes to Lost in a Story.
How it works:
❤ Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.
❤ Order on ascending date added.
❤ Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books.
❤ Read the synopsis of the books.
❤ Decide: keep it or should it go
Here’s the next patch:
➥ The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr
The synopsis seems great, don’t get me wrong, but honestly, I don’t think I will pick this book up unless I receive it as a gift or something.
Verdict: REMOVE ✖
➥ Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire, #1) by Natasha Ngan
Okay, who hasn’t heard about this book? I have been dreading to read it for months and months now. Definitely staying on this list, probably forever!
Verdict: KEEP ☑
➥ Lifel1k3 (Lifelike, #1) by Jay Kristoff
This reminds me of Warcross for some reason. And I know it’s not connected at all, but it just does. And I can’t wait to have the opportunity to read it!
Verdict: KEEP ☑
➥ One Crazy Summer (Gaither Sisters, #1) by Rita Williams-Garcia
Umm, I don’t know why I have this book on my list.
Verdict: REMOVE ✖
➥ The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern
I love Cecelia Ahern, and I had ALL OF HER BOOKS added to my TBR. Before making this post I realised that if I didn’t do something, the rest of the next 3 posts will be all about her. So I decided to only choose one book at a time from her, and read them one by one, and add them on my TBR one by one. So this one stayed.
Verdict: KEEP ☑
➥ The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks
The same happens with Nicholas Sparks. He was the romance author I spend my childhood with. I cried over all of his books, and they all have a special place in my heart. It is still my goal to read ALL the books he has written, one by one.
Verdict: KEEP ☑
➥ Дениција by Петре М. Андреевски (Denicija by Petre M. Andreevski)
This is a Macedonian book. Poetry full of love and humanity, and a lot of moments of lost loved ones. This one is a gem, and a treasure I carry in my heart from the country I was born in. I am keeping it.
Verdict: KEEP ☑
➥ The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3) by Nnedi Okorafor
If you already know me and my posts, you will know that I never keep a book that is not first in a series, unless I have read the previous books. This is the reason I am removing this one, but I have added the first book to my TBR – so let’s call it even 🙂
Verdict: REMOVE ✖
➥ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
I have to keep this. I mean, this has to be read by every bookworm, right?
Verdict: KEEP ☑
➥ Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1) by Laini Taylor
Okay, honestly, this has been the hardest Down The TBR Hole Tag ever. It has all the books I want to read, and it’s so hard to get rid of them. I am keeping this one, because I am in love with the cover and synopsis. And don’t forget all the hype it gets. It gets me curious of whether it’s all worth it.
Verdict: KEEP ☑
As this was the last entry in 2018, I will do a little statistic of what I have done in these past 12 Down The TBR Hole posts,
I have listed 120 titles, of which I have kept 71 and I have removed 49. 268 titles still remain to be listed from my TBR List (27 more posts), and I can’t wait to see my end results.
Let me know if you have read any of these, and if you want me to keep or remove any of these books from my list! I look forward to see what you think!
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