pickThis book HURTS! I have, over the course of this trilogy; developed anxiety, heart palpitations, and my depression is definitely not living the good life. I think these books are an important read and a deeply emotional reminder. I learned a lot, and am horrified by all of it. 5/5 stars ⭐️
so-soI usually enjoy books about wandering Berlin, but this one not so much.
A bildungsroman featuring a lot of drugs, bad sex and bad choices, I winced for the protagonist as she made one awful decision after another. Lots of interesting individual elements, but I never felt I really understood where the author was going (and in placed desperately just hoped it would all just Stop!)
#WomensPrizeLL25
I was home neither in Rosenwald nor in Gropiusstadt. And like so many children before me, I became my own exile.
At school, the girls wore padded down jackets and boots I had seen only in equestrian ads. They knew how to ride horses and drank expensive water and used Dr. Hauschka products, which felt so expensive back then, I believed only millionaires could afford them. Longingly, I used a pump of their creams, inhaling that herbal scent.
pickBook 9 #WP25
This is a low pick for me. The last 100 pages were a bit of a struggle, I didn't want to pick it up and read more about her self destruction, but I was still interested in her life as an Afghani-German and what it was like as a German immigrant with so much hate that we don't talk about.
The writing throughout is solid, and the perspective is one I don't see a lot of in English Lit so it makes sense why this was chosen for the WP
She turned on the radio in the mornings, dancing when rock songs filled the kitchen with bygone delight. Recited poetry in an old, formal Persian-lines that I didn't understand but whose cadences imprinted themselves onto my brain-and took me to local libraries, where I was allowed to read as much as I wanted, the weight of the laminated library card like a luxurious treasure in my hand, my own name written in blue ink underneath: Nilab Haddadi.
...as if to signal to us idiots that reality still existed...
(How do you let someone know the party's over?)
#WeeklyForecast
#WP25 I have 100 pages left of the tagged then I can start A Little Trickerie which I am super excited for
🎧This week's listen will be Ancillary Justice my January #DoubleSpin
Then hoping to sneak in The Coin which needs to go back to the library.
"Yet the hymns, the hosannas and hevenu shalom aleichem, the psalms, the lessons of Genesis and Revolution, they did not remain. What remains is the searing loneliness I felt, the nights I stayed awake by myself, reading Wuthering Heights and Lolita, underlining everything, trying to forget the fact I was one of the only girls at school who had black hair.
#WP25
pickI finally finished this massive tome. I‘ve neglected learning much about WW2 over my lifetime, so this was quite the journey through history, but well worth it. I realize that some modern academic historians are critical of Shirer‘s work in that as a journalist, they view him as an amateur who failed to research and analyze in a rigorous manner. I‘m in no position to weigh in on that, but I can confess that I did enjoy this book quite a bit.
