the unamericans. molly antopol. (198)

i first heard of the unamericans from my friend, lisa.  molly antopol is her friend's daughter, and lisa attended a book party for it.  then, i saw it listed on flavorrpill, so i decided to check it out.

as i mentioned before, 2014 has become the year of the short story for me and i can honestly say this is the best collection of short stories, i have read this year.  yes, i dare say, even better than lorrie moore, well bark, on par with self-help.  in fact, as i read, i had the same feelings of awe and love as i did when i read jhumpa lahiri's interpreter of maladies.  i, became invested in every single story, and each story felt complete.  i read somewhere that each story felt like a novel and that is an excellent description of the unamericans (sorry i feel bad for plagiarizing someone, but i honestly don't know where i read that, but i am letting you know it was not my original thought.)  but this collection was truly great, it will definitely be in the top 5 (it's currently in the top 3) greatest books i have read this year.

surprisingly i enjoyed every story in this collections.  usually, there is one that is awkward and you wonder why it was included, or one that ended too abruptly, or took an odd turned that ruined the story, but this was not the case.  every story was extremely well-written, as i mentioned before, i became invested in every character and their stories.

though there was not a bad story, i will admit that the opening to "retrospective", the final story, worried me.  i thought i was going to become bored, but luckily eva's daughter played a small role.  by the end, with the mention of eva's smile in her paintings, i knew this tale had a tragic ending.    

but again every story was enjoyable in their own way and i as i looked through to find my favorites, i want to list them all.  but i will narrow it down.  highlights for me were "my grandmother tells me this story", "the quietest man", and "the unknown soldier".

"my grandmother tells me this story" is exactly that a story told by a grandmother to a granddaughter that is meddling in things she is too young to be worried about.  the grandmother shared about how she escaped from a uniform factory in nazi-occupied poland and met a young boy who would become the young girl's grandfather.  the grandfather was the leader of a gang of boys, yiddish underground, and though they derail trains and steal, he has a moral compass and only took what was needed.  i do not want to give too much away, but in an attempt to prove herself, the grandmother does something that she regrets and that will haunt her forever.  it is a sad, tale but the one of the boundaries that humans were pushed to during the holocaust.

"the quietest man" is the story of a young playwright and her father.  the father was nervous because his daughter wrote a play about their family and since he was absent during her childhood, he was worried that it will reveal him as a deadbeat dad.  he did not want to be ridicule though he knew that it would be a true portrayal.  however, in the end it was revealed that the daughter's play is actually in tribute to him.  he was part of an anti-government movement in prague and he and her mother along with two others published a journal.  when he was called in for questioning, he did not reveal anyone's name thus earning the nickname "the quietest man."  his daughter hoping to make herself a part of this important event, asked him if she was there during the meetings of those in charge of the journal.  sadly, he lies to her, which broke my heart and just demonstrated what a horrible father he was.  ironically he should have just kept quiet.

"the unknown soldier" is the story of an actor that was blacklisted and served time during the mccarthy era.  he is fresh out of prison and wanting to reconnect with his son.  i won't go into too much detail (i feel like i did on that last one and i really want people to read this collection.)

i can't stress enough that this is the best collection of short stories i read this year.  antopol was national book foundation's 5 under 35 honoree.  she is very deserving of this title and i look forward to seeing more from her.

the fun parts: stories. sam lipsyte (195)

this cover is too dark for a good picture. i'm sorry.  i picked up sam lipsyte's the fun parts because bj novak endorsed it on his instagram.  though i am heartbroken that he no longer follows me on there, i will continue to read the books that he recommends via it.  

i hadn't heard of lipyste prior to bj's post, but i learned from the front cover that he is a writer for time magazine and has written for the new yorker, the paris review and playboy.  a nice variety and make sense because his work is witty and very tongue-in-cheek.

the stories were very interesting and twisted.  i enjoyed "deniers", the story of a daughter of a holocaust survivor that wanted to connect with her father who refused to tell her about it.  in the end, she ended up dating an ex-nazi, in an attempt to help reform him. i enjoyed the premise of "the republic of empathy", it demonstrated six degrees of separation, how we are linked in life, though i didn't get the ending.  or maybe i just wasn't intelligent enough, maybe it's supposed to be that all humans are connected but in the end it doesn't save mankind, it just an odd series of coincidences.  so that story was actually very deep as well.  i liked the idea of the male doula and imagined morgan from the mindy project as the doulo.  i also enjoyed snacks and exploration of how shitty it is to be fat.  also it demonstrated of how violence and hate is really just self-hate.  

the rest of the stories were well written but not my cup of tea.  lipstye is a great writer as demonstrated by the list of publications he worked for.  i enjoyed his references post pop culture and literary.  my favorite one was from "the republic of empathy", "she has nice, soft-looking hair, which is a tell-me-about-the-rabbits-george thing to say, but what can you do?"  lol.  well played!

enjoyable read, didn't completely wow me, but since this is the year of the short story, glad that i read these.

milkweed. jerry spinelli. (156)

jerry spinelli's milkweed caught my eye during a library visit at albany park when i was subbing.  the row of gold book spines looked so crisp and neat, i amazoned to see what the novel was about.  i learned that it was a story about a young gypsy or jewish thief living in nazi-occupied warsaw.  it sounded interesting but i didn't decide to check it out until after i read the diary of a young girl and night.  

this book was an unexpected delight.  i had no idea what it was about but i guess you can judge a book by its spine.

it is the tale of a holocaust-era robin hood, stopthief.  stopthief was an orphan who might have been a gypsy.  his origins are unknown, he had no recollection of his family, only memories of stealing to eat.  while stealing bread from a woman, he met uri would took stopthief under his wing and helped him survive nazi-occupied poland.  uri created a backstory for uri and renamed him misha pilsudski.  

before i continue i have to share how much i loved uri and how he selfishly cared for misha.  misha was the hero of this story but uri was definitely his guardian angel.

uri and misha stole food to survive but they had a strict moral code and only stole what was needed and shared with others.  they shared their loot with a gang of boys but also orphans living in a home.  misha also befriended a young girl, janina, and helped her family by them providing food.  food during this time was scarce and thankfully misha and uri used their talents to steal for good use.  though they were often called filthy thieves and jews, they had hearts of gold and helped without realizing they were.

the reader follows misha through a series of dark and horrific events, the nazi invasion of the warsaw, bombings by russia, life in the ghetto and deportation to the concentration camps. it's all very heavy but filtered through the innocence of misha it is easier to digest and being a young adult novel, easier for young readers to comprehend what occurred during the holocaust.

misha, like most children, i would image, during the holocaust did not completely understand the horrors of the nazis.  as demonstrated in night even adults were unaware of what was happening to the jews.  misha's innocence and naïveté was endearing and demonstrated just how preposterous and evil the nazi party was because the reality was unconceivable to misha's young mind.  for example, misha desire to be a nazi so that he could march in a parade, he had no idea of what they were doing, he just liked parades.  or how he always identified himself as gypsy when called a jew not knowing it was unfavorable to be either.  the best example was his desire to follow the trains to the ovens not knowing what was occurring at the camps.  but what made him special was not knowing that his thieving provided so much.  looking for coals was a game to him, little did he know the warmth he gave to the orphans.  as he grew older he started to understand and did his best to provide for those he loved, as demonstrated in his trying to find a pickled egg for janina when she had lost all hope.

another stark contrast to misha's innocence was the street gang boy's sarcasm.  it was sad to see the boys talk about life without the blind faith in happiness that kids have.  instead the kids talked of death so matter of fact because of what they had lived through.  but it was sweet when they talked about angels or mothers or angles , things that made them hopeful about life.   

also the title milkweed came for this idea of angels.  while in the cemetery the boys come across a headstone and discussed angels.  misha later took janina explained angels to her.  later, janina found a milkweed puff on her shirt and called it her angel.  and so milkweed became angels and gave the kids hope.

in every book, i read i am still shocked by what the jews had to endure.  i couldn't imagine resorting to eating rats or standing out in the snow and having to relief myself on myself.  or walking around with the dead bodies covered by newspapers.  it was also horrible to read how the soldiers and their girlfriends treated the jews like a freak show, taking pictures and watching them

fight over bread like birds.  though i did   appreciated how spinelli included misha's craziness that occurred from having survived and needing to share what he experienced.  how difficult to endure all that only to be expected to function as though it hadn't in a new foreign land. the stress this must have caused justified misha's craziness.  thankfully, misha ended up with a happy ending with his daughter and granddaughter.

this book was a really wonderful story about a very dark period in history.  its a story filled with hope and compassion with the world seemed to be void of it.  

anne frank: diary of a young girl.

after reading the book thief, i decided to read the holocaust based books on my to-read list, the first one being anne frank:  the diary of a young girl.

as a kid, i had a copy of this book but i never read it.  why? i have no idea but never read it.  sadly, i wish i did though because i probably would have enjoyed this book more than i did.

okay, i am might end up going to hell for saying this but at times i found myself bored while reading anne frank's diary.  also after reading the first couple of entries, i was skeptical and thought maybe her dad wrote.  i know i should probably burn in hell for such thoughts,  but before you think i am the most horrible person on the earth, let me explain myself.

i recognize the importance of anne frank and her diary because it gives victims of the holocaust a face.  like i wrote in my my post on the graphic novels, maus, holocaust narratives provide us with a personal experience that we would never receive from a textbook.  it humanizes the holocaust; we can read that millions of jews were killed and recognize it as a tragedy for mankind but reading about a specific individual and learning about it provides us not only with a better understanding but also compassion for the victims.

furthermore, i recognize the importance of anne frank's diary because it is usually the first narrative by a holocaust victim that one reads.  unfortunately, for me, it was not my first, so it didn't leave that big of an impact on me.  furthermore, i am not as naive as young adult me would have been, so i was not surprised by the fact that anne frank was the same as any other 13/14 year old girl.  (and yes, i would have been that naive, i didn't know jewish people growing up.)  anne was just as boy craze, insecure, confused, moody, hopeful, and curious about her body as any other girl, she just had the unfortunate addition of being a jewish girl in nazi germany.  sincs this is the case, you have to forgive 30-year-old me for losing interest, reading about 13-year-old life drama.  and lets be honest, this made up majority of the diary, i got bored with girl talk.

quick digression, i have to add, i found it very interesting that anne discussed the two selfs within her.  i often feel like that, i have my loud crazy extrovert self and then my quiet more reserved and serious self.  i think it's part of being a gemini and as i read thought she had to for sure be one.  and yes, anne was a gemini, birthday june 11.

i must add that i was interested in reading about their daily life in the secret annex.  what a blessing and how brave their friends that helped them.  i enjoyed reading her descriptions of their days. also how difficult it was to be inside all day and not allowed out, i would have gone stir crazy.  it's even more saddening when you consider the alternative to hiding.  and though at times i lost interesting in the diary, there is no denying what a strong spirit anne had to endure all that she did.

it was also interesting to read anne's thoughts on politics but her discussions made me very skeptical about anne actually penning this diary.  i have to admit that after reading the first entry, i googled to see if her dad had written her diary instead.  the language used just seemed to sophisticated for a 13 year old.  i understand that anne's family was affluent and her education was therefore superb, i mean, we did see all that she studied.  but something just felt inauthentic with her speech, i wondered if it was also a bad translation.  however, my google finds showed that there were other skeptics and that tests were done on the paper and that she did write it.  

i did read that she did rewrote part of the diary with the intend of it one day being published, after hearing the radio program discuss the importance of diaries from that time period.  so i can imagine her family helping her with part of the rewriting.  also i am sure that her discussions of politics and war were heavily influenced by her family and the conversations of the secret annexe.  and i mean the parts about peter were so honest that the diary had to be her words.  but i do believe she had a little help.  but i mean no harm no foul, because at the end of the day, the diary is still an important narrative for history.

but all in all, a wonderful book and as mentioned in the previous sentence an important book for history and for our betterment as humans.

the book thief. markus zusak. (151)

i have to admit that when i saw the book thief in the ya section at kmart, last year, i was judgy and didn't think much of it.  i like books, but what kind of person steals them?  and why would i want to read about it?!?!   (yeah, i totally misjudged that title.)  however, when i saw it on my friend fabian's instagram, i decided to not dismiss it.  and then when i saw the trailer for the movie version and saw the girl stealing the book from the nazi burn pile, i decided i had to check it out!

to start, i have to say i appreciate death as the narrator.  having death as the storyteller allowed the reader even greater insight.  also it allowed for the bleak comments about dying to be clever versus shocking because they came straight from death's mouth. it also got me thinking why is death never revered as a god?  he is never the head god but a b-list one.  death is something that is inevitable so shouldn't we have an open dialogue with death?  especially since everyone believes in death, so why not party to me?  i want to be able to ask him for more time? maybe exchange our own time for some more of our loved ones?  as odd as it may seem i would find greater comfort praying to death versus god, death is certain, i am unsure if god even exists.

but back to the book thief, it was a wonderful story.  i absolutely adored liesel, rudy, hans, the mayor's wife, and max.  i loved how hans taught liesel to read by painting unknown words on the wall.  i loved how hans kept his promised and kept max as safe as he could.  and i admired hans for having a heart, for instinctually helping the old jewish man during the march, not seeing him as a jew but someone in need.  

i loved how rudy rebelled against the hitler youth and always tried to stick up for the little guy.  though i have to say rudy's blackface as jesse owens was inexcusable, having grown up with white idols as a person of colored i never tried to whiten my face to emulate what i saw on tv.  rudy's desire to paint himself black demonstrated that he did not see jesse owens as a hero but a black hero.  blackface is inherently racist regardless of how hard the author attempted to make it endearing.  

i loved how liesel went to read books with the mayor's wife.  i admired the mayor's wife for understanding that liesel's anger was due to the tension of the world and left her a book for her to  steal.  

i also loved max, his boxing hitler (with a realistic ending) and the stories he wrote for liesel.  i will say that his story of him as a bird was better then the tree one.  

the characters were great and memorable.  i of course, cried at the end. how sad i was to lose all the characters that i loved.  i was in tears as liesel discovered all of the ones she loved were dead.  and how happy i was when we all discovered that max survived and that liesel went onto life a long life.

it was a great story and how brave liesel was.  her desire to read and thirst for knowledge was inspiring.  i admired how she wanted to test herself with reading at school.  how brave and lucky she was for not being killed by the nazis each time she intervened with the marching of the jewish prisoners.  and how beautiful it was when she and max discovered each others sufferings and helped each other overcome grief.  i loved how when he was sick she brought him a small gift, things to tell him when he woke up.  how sweet and endearing.

i loved the whimsy this book was filled with though i have to admit that some of the death's interjection did get a tad distracting.  i also have to admit that all of the foreshadowing that occurred via death did take away from the story.  i understand that the foreshadowing was to lessen the blow that would be dealt later but i think even the ya readers could have expected the impact.  no offense but a story about nazi germany, someone and quite possibly everyone will die.  also it made me too paranoid about the mayor's wife.  i kept waiting for her to snap but she never did.

regardless of all that, it was a very lovely read and i look forward to seeing the film.

life after life. kate atkinson. (112)

i had never heard of kate atkinson before but both amazon and barnes and nobles sent out emails promoting her new book "life after life" the week it came out.  since the premise sounded interesting, a woman, ursula todd dies numerous times but is always reborn, i decided to check it out.

i wasn't sure what to expect but i really enjoyed "life after life" like five stars on goodreads.com enjoy.  as the cover informed me, author gillian flynn called it "one of the best novels [she's] read this century", which initially sounded impressive but after realizing that we are only 13 years into this century, i can agree with her.  

"life after life" was enthralling, i had to find out how urusla's lives would turn out and what she would alter or how fate would alter it for her.  though i will admit there was a period when i did get a bit bored with her life (after she purposely killed herself for the first time) but it was

mostly because she lost her psyhic-esque powers.  also i couldn't put it down because i had to find out how it ended!  the book opens with an event that takes place in germany in 1930 and given the time and the place it is foreshadowed that hitler was assassinated!  this kept me reading and searching because i had to find out how would ursula's lives got to that point?

the novel is filled with great characters.  ursula is a wonderful protagonist that the reader becomes invested in.  one of her lives was extremely dark and was difficult to read.  as i read, all i could think about was how i hope she died soon so that she would be taken out of her misery. also i adored her family, her mother sylvie and all of her literary allusions, her sister pamela and their correspondence and of course her brother teddy since everyone adored him.  i also loved her aunt izzie.  she was a wild one but i loved izzie's crazy lifestyle and all of the colorful things she said plus she was alway there when her niece needed help.

atkinson's writing was beautiful.  her characters were poetic and as a result so is her novel.  it is filled with beautiful descriptions.  and as i mentioned before her characters are very literary and the novel is filled with allusions to keats, dante, the brönte sisters, austen and even dickens.  i loved her description of an elderly izzie as "a dipsomaniac miss havisham" (which could be an apt description for me when i get old.)

(spoiler alert:  wait to read this section until you read it!)

i do feel there were one gap i found in the novel.  for example, when ursula did kill herself, she didn't have any recollection of her previous lives yet she still went to the psychologist.  this did not make sense because the reason ursula went to the psychologist was because of peculiar  déjà vu bouts as a kid but if she had no recollection why did she go to the psychologist?  though the novel

did show some things were bound to happen regardless of ursula intervening.  (spoiler alert!!) i was also surprised as to how ursula never went back to the life in which she became a mother.  i guess she was never really one for motherhood and i am just projecting my personal choice on to her but i would have had the kid but gotten out of germany.  another  challenging part was because of the rebirths, characters were introduced before their importance was none so it was difficult to keep track of everyone.

(spoiler alert!)

i appreciated how in the end ursula could not completely alter history.  some things were meant to be a certain way regardless of ursula's interventions. and alas that is life.  people will always wish that events in history, like the rise of hitler and the holocaust never occurred but unfortunately there is no way to change things.  and instead of dwelling on "what if's", people should learn from it and prevent history from repeating itself.  ursula and pamela's son had a similar discussion to this effect. the world (or if you believe in him god) works in mysterious ways and instead of dwelling on the negative you have to continue on living.  

i find it interesting that i read "life after life" just after having read "the great gatsby" because both novel feature individuals trapped by their past. gatsby wants to go back and relive his life the way it should

have been while ursula is thrown back to relive hers.  it seems like ursula has the upper hand because she can do something gatsby can not.  however, even though ursula has the ability to go back into the past and change things, she still does not have complete control over the course of life.  life did not follow one path for ursula.  it is not like the "choose your own adventure" books of my youth in which it follows the same path and all that alters is your choice.  instead different occurrences caused things to change and some to remain the same so you never know what will occur, you can only make a choice that you think is the best and hope that it is.  this is demonstrated in the novel as ursula is often faced multiple times with the same events.  and again this is life, you have to hope your actions are for the best.

as i have gotten older, i have been dwelling on the past and what i would change if i could go back in time.  yes, i am content with my life so far, i have a wonderful set of friends, a supportive family and random adventures (i recently wrote these things down for a simmons class as to what i was grateful for.) but there are things i would change if i could be reborn as myself: i wouldn't have wasted time on certain guys, i would have study aboard, i would have taken spanish class more seriously in high school, lost my virginity at an earlier age, been a better sister/daughter/friend at times, never quit dance when i was young, did more interning, and became an art history major.  but i have no serious regrets.  and there are definitely some mistakes in my life that i would do over again because it has made the person i am today.  there are also mistakes i made that were worth it do there is that too.  

for those you that know me i am

not one for religion and do not believe in an afterlife because living for etenity sounds tedious and draining.  however, i have always found the idea of reincarnation intriguing but not coming back as different things but as the same person.  it's odd because i have thought of this before reading this book.  i could believe in a universe in which existence is a series of cycles, we get one life and we come back and relive it for all of etenity.  and sometimes we make the right decisions and sometimes we make

the wrong ones but life just goes

on and on in a continual circle or a cyhper that keeps moving like a rolling stone (erykah badu reference).  so if there is a faith that believes in that sign me

up! i like the idea of life after life, just like i liked the book.  

(sorry that was so cheesy but wanted to end this post but was unsure how!  lol)

maus. art spiegelman. (102)

i remember learning about "maus" in college, the premise was very interesting, a comic book about the holocaust with the jews as mice and the nazis as cats. but i never picked it up. what brought it back into my life was flavorpill's 30 to read before 30 so i finally read it.

what a beautiful story. the comic book is a memoir, the story of author's father, vladek spiegelman and what he endured during the holocaust. i am always so amazed by how fate worked in favor of those who survived the holocaust and how strong they were to have lived through what they did. however, i would not call their survival a blessing but luck because as explained in a therapy session of the cartoonist:

it was random who survived and who didn't. and surviving is not more admirable than dying. it sad because as discussed in this same session the guilt of those who survived for living. but their fate was out of their hands, it simply was luck. i always think of my friend larry's grandfather who survived the holocaust, because he knitted socks for the nazi. furthermore, he had a wrist injury that allowed him to knit as well as he did. just proving that life really does work in mysterious ways.

i was also impressed by how resourceful vladek was from the very beginning. he took the initiative to find a solution for his problems. vladek's intelligence had much to do with his surivivall. i was amazed by how he was able to deliver food and letters to his wife anja when they were both in camp. i would have never been that resourceful. also he was very innovative, for example how he used the blacket as a hammock while in the trains. it was impressive to see what how clever we was in finding solutions for his survival.

(sorry to the reader, i am sorry for my overuse of amazing and impressive but i am truly in awe of all that happen in vladek's life).

if you haven't read "maus" you should. i couldn't put it down and finished it in a day (granted it is a graphic novel). "maus" is a truly remarkable story and should not be rehashed via me but something you experience on your own.

i do think "maus" is an important read for everyone and not just before 30. we know of the holocaust and how horrible it was but there is still some disconnect from it. we know that hitler and the nazi were evil but for most people, the holocaust is an event in history books. "maus" show us the human experience (though cleverly through animal characters). it gives a soul to the individuals we read about as stastiscs in textbooks. since it is in comic book form, it's presented in a medium everyone can understand and thus relate to. i think it should be used as text for high school students when learning about the holocaust so they can have a better understanding of what occured. for the only way we can prevent history from repeating is knowing our past.

last but not least, i will say that it pained me to see art not wanting to be near his father. his father worked so hard for his son and i wish art was more patient with with him. but then i also get how it can be with parents.