Hiya!
This week I'm gonna tell ya what I've been reading! I thought I would wait to continue with this until I've read something good enough to actually have something to talk about. So I'm not rambling on. Like I am right now :-)
Any ways I've read two really good books lately.
So the first is Anna Karenina. I know, I know. Intense right? Not really. For those of you who aren't book nerds, Anna Karenina was written a couple hundred years ago by a Russian guy named Leo Tolstoy. It's about a woman named Anna Karenina (Quelle surprise! :-) ) who has an affair with a Count and has to deal with the consequences of her decision. At least that's what it's about on the surface.
A lot of people are scared of Tolstoy. This is understandable. An 800 page book written originally in Russian is a little intimidating. At least I thought it was. But I was wrong. Anna Karenina was surprisingly easy to read. I got completely lost in it. I think Tolstoy was very brave to write so frankly about a subject that was so taboo at the time. I sometimes find that books written in the same time period as Anna Karenina are a little unrealistic. I sometimes wonder if people really spoke that way. But in Anna Karenina I had not problem imagining the characters yelling at each other, laughing, crying.
It's definitely a great book.
I also just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. It was amazing!
It's about a young vet named Jacob who joined a circus during the Depression. It has a little bit of everything. It's happy, sad and moving all at once. I don't want to give anything away. All I can say is you need to read it!
There are some books that help us become who we are. These books change our way of thinking forever and keep doing so every time we read them. For me this book is Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
We all know the story: a young girl writes a diary while hiding in a small attic apartment from the Nazi's because she happens to be Jewish. The first time I read it was the summer going in to grade 7. I was just a year shy of when Anne began writing her diary at the age of 13.Since then I think I've read it about 4 times. Each time I read it I learn something different. However there are a couple of things that always stand out to me. One thing I always appreciate is how Anne always finds the good in her situation. While living conditions must of us can't even IMAGINE Anne finds joy in the littlest things, like a glimpse of the sky through the attic window. Despite the horrible things going on around her, Anne found the good. She wasn't always optimistic, of course. Quite often she was terrified but she always tried to find ways to be happy. All of us need to do this. We need to stop being so caught up in our selves and find the joy that comes from simply looking up at a blue sky.
Another thing that always occurs to me when I re-read Anne's diary is how different the person we are on the outside is from the person we are on the inside. The people around her thought that Anne was light hearted and unthinking when in reality she was the complete and total opposite. We need to think about how other people could really be feeling before we judge.
I just finished reading Annexed by Sharon Dogar. It's the story of Anne Frank from the point of view of Peter Van Peels, the son of the family who were in hiding with the Franks. It's very moving and definitely a must read as is Ann's diary. In my opinion Anne Frank's diary not only gives voice to the millions of Holocaust victims, it also shows us the strength of the human spirit in the face of tragedy.
"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
— Anne Frank
