Hhhh. Laurent Binet | 
pickWe have a fantastic novel to discuss this week. Laurent Binet's debut novel “HHhH“ has been on both our radars since its release over a decade ago and our high expectations were met and exceeded by this brilliant, thrilling, and important book. We highly recommend this book and we hope you enjoy our conversation about all things “HHhH.“
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0YJ0Hwirv08rBPPHBry1oQ
I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me - I have a lot of books. Join in if you want!
#ABookADay2023
pickIn anticipation of an anniversary trip last wknd i rd this + it helped inform me of a terrible history. 2 men, a Czech + a Slovak parachute back to assassinate heydrich.An incredible tale of bravery, sacrifice, betrayal & cruelty. I struggled with the format of the author as a character explaining how he wrote the bk. I loved Prague, so plan to return to see the beautiful city + visit the cathedral where the final scenes occur, a remarkable tale
I just had to answer question number 1. I feel strongly about a few authors but the tagged book is easily the worst. 🤢
As for a popular book I don‘t want to read? Probably the most recent Outlander book, Go Tell the Bees… I‘ve lost track of everything and have no desire to reread them all
#ihavequestions @RaeLovesToRead
so-so#ReadingEurope2020 @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB
This was the last book I needed to finish the challenge! 🎉 If anyone else is interested in this book I'm happy to send it to you. #PayItForward
I'm a bit torn on my thoughts. The story was intriguing and I didn't get bored. However, something about the way it was written made it hard for me to really get into the book as much as I would have liked.
pick5 ⭐
#bookspin for #bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks
#slovakia #readingeurope2020 @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB
#superseptember readathon results
Finish:
✔️HHhH for #readingeurope2020 #Slovakia
✔️Fahrenheit 451 for #authoramonth
✔️The Tuscan Girl (just because)
Continue:
✔️The Black Rose along with my son
✔️Libertarians on the Prairie and On the Way Home for #laurarosereadathon
Start:
✔️An audiobook tbd (Purge)
This readathon really pulled me out of a rut I was in. So glad to have done it.
I was posting my review on LibraryThing and came across this from another reviewer, who was quoting an Amazon review. This aptly describes this author‘s style. If that works for you, then you are going to love the tagged book. It didn‘t work for me.
panIf you‘ve read any of my posts about this book, you know I thoroughly disliked it. Whatever it is called, metafiction or infranovel, the style undermined the seriousness & sadness of a Czech & Slovak who gave their lives to assassinate the man behind the Final Solution. The author‘s diatribes about his fears, doubts, pride in his research interrupted & belittled the subject. His style may be appropriate in another setting, maybe, but not here. ⬇️
I‘m trying to rush through this book and vowed to myself not to post any more quotes, but this is too offensive to pass up. The author has just related a sad, horrible incident in French history in which a Frenchman is responsible for the deportation of Jews. This is the (French) author‘s response:
“How many World Cups will we have to win in order to erase such a stain?”
Is soccer/football even comparable to the Holocaust? 😡
I‘m in @Andrew65 ! I need motivation to finish the tagged book. So my goals for #superseptember are...
Finish:
HHhH for #readingeurope2020 #Slovakia
Fahrenheit 451 for #authoramonth
The Tuscan Girl (just because)
Continue:
The Black Rose along with my son
Libertarians on the Prairie and On the Way Home for #laurarosereadathon
Start:
An audiobook tbd
I again ask WHY??? Why do I care if the author‘s girlfriend remembers the color of the car? And why does it have its own chapter?
Will I ever finish this book? I put it down for 2 weeks because it irritated me so much and here we go again. “I know...I know...I know” at least 10x in this 1 paragraph. I feel like the author desperately wants us to praise all the work he did to research it. Isn‘t that what an epilogue is for?
I also got another description in the book with lots of details, & a follow-up chapter to tell us “no” that‘s not what happened! 😡 WHY?!?!
#Slovakia
#bookspin and #doublespin results @TheAromaofBooks
Today. Along w/some housework and audiocrafting. Reading can be difficult with kitty love. Sometimes she just wants to be right in my face. I don‘t mind since we almost lost her to heart disease. I‘ll take all the love while I can.
Meanwhile I figured out how to tolerate this book. Every few chapters he‘ll go off into all his woes about writing the last few chapters or tell us what his girlfriend is up to. So I skip them! Problem solved!
As before, and as is common in this book, the author once again takes back everything he‘s just written: “That scene, like the one before it, is perfectly believable and totally made up.”
So why did I bother reading the previous two chapters?
I feel like I‘m just wasting my time! But still I read...
The more I read, the more infuriating I find this book and agree with previous Littens who bailed on it. The so-called metafiction is jarring and makes for an extraordinarily difficult reading experience. Here‘s a perfect example:
“The first German tanks enter the city.”
No wait, they were motorbikes with sidecars! Just say that! Why interrupt the story to correct yourself?!?
I desperately want to bail but I need #Slovakia. 🤬
I absolutely loved how the author describes what he would do if he were to write like Victor Hugo, whom I had to abandon for the reasons described here. For example, to mimic Hugo he‘d have to provide “a minutely detailed description of the piano, accompanied by a long disquisition on German music at the beginning of the century...and there, only at that point, would my actual story begin.”
#bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks
The squeaking only got worse when you posted this lol! 😂😂😂
Thank you so much for organising this! 😘
Going to try to complete columns B & O, and row 3.
pickThis is the story of the assassination of Hydrich in Prague which I knew absolutely nothing about. The author blends this with his own feelings about writing about a factual event and whether to add fiction to it etc. Sometimes this part was overdone for me but I liked the book overall. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #hatoncover #booked2020 #france #readingeurope2020
pickPrague, 1942, operation "Anthropoid". Two czech parachutist attempt to kill SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher of Prague.
It was an interesting reading. The author tells the story of these two men while explaining the difficulties he met in the process of writing. The two stories blend harmoniously together, and it is really well writen.
The only downside: that kind of writing is less emotional than a direct narrative.
Loved this bookstore/cafe in Phuket Town. Pretty much all the books were in Thai though.
Paris was beautiful, but I also visited (unfortunately just through the book) two smaller cities along the coast in the south of the country, where I managed to read the book to the end. Next stop: Berlin, Germany.
Reading challenge #backpackEurope
pickNovel with two parallel stories - author view (criticism) on the writing of historical novels (what is the 'proper' approach), and the central story of two Czech-Slovak soldiers (Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš), assassins of Reinhard Heydrich (man behind the final Jewish question). The story is an interesting combination of criticism, historical facts and fiction, and the result is a very untypical historical novel.
#backpackEurope #France
New day, new book, new city... Nice weather in Paris for outdoor breakfast 😁
#backpackEurope
Heydrich is not a paper monster. This book sneaks up on me with lines like this and other thought provoking statements. (also some terrifyingly similar statements that sound like he‘s quoting Trump instead of Hitler.)
A bookish MARCH, held in place by a much need giant cup of tea.
#MagicalMarch
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @vkois88
bailedI usually find it annoying when famous historical people show up in fiction, but when the person (Reinhard Heydrich, 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich") and the event (his assassination in 1942) are largely unfamiliar to me, a fictionalized account is the last thing I want to read. I like my facts and my history straight up, thank you very much. Bailed less than 10% of the way in.
I am really having trouble getting into this novel, which many readers I greatly respect have liked a lot. The true story of Nazi Heydrich's assassination is fascinating and important but this doesn't feel like a novel at all so far, but rather a loose memoiristic account of a man researching the historical event. The above passage is the first bit that seems fictional. I am really not sure about this one....
pickThis book recounts an aspect of World War II of which I was unaware--the assassination of Nazi official Heydrich in Czechoslovakia. The narrator's personal musings about both the historical events as well his struggles to faithfully render them offer a unique presentation of the material. I love the narrative's tone, the utter disgust with evil, the reverence for the heroes of the tale, and the passion for his adopted city Prague.
panVery self-aware, self-criticizing yet self-congratulatory metafiction. Essentially it felt like the narrator got so bogged down in whether fiction was allowed to be made up (to the level of obsessing about the color of Heydrich's car) that he lost my interest and the story thread. I liked some of his research related asides but lost patience with his principle-related? paralysis.
Not my cup of tea - will go back to Albright's Prague Winter.
pickThere should be a word for *that* feeling when you get to the point in a book that makes you ignore life just to finish. I bet the Dutch have a word for it...
Just startes this after a recent trip to Prague when I first learned of Heydrich and Operation Anthropoid. So far, I am half annoyed, half charmed by the authorial asides - interested in the research, exhibits and films, annoyed by the self-indulgent, self-congratulatory philosophizing about whether you should be allowed to invent characters or dialogue.
pickA gripping fictionalization of an amazing true story I'm ashamed I knew nothing about. Unique presentation/narrative. Heavy subject matter (WWII Germany) but recommended for fans of historical fiction.
pickGood but unusual. Familiar with WW2 history & you'll know the story -assassination attempt of Heidrich in Prague. But this story is equally about the narrator who is writing a book about the incident and his reflection on what to include or not. Style is split between the text of the book he's writing and his own thoughts about the process. Different take on a familiar true episode in history. Worth reading.
pickIt's really an interesting book. The writer comments all the process of writing his book: his research, his doubts, his questions, etc. From now on, when I'll read a historical fiction/book, I'll always think about this book. It was very enlightening!
