Top 101

Thanks to Rebecca at Just One More Page for making me aware of this Top 101 Booklover's List published yearly by Dymock's. I have highlighted the ones that I am sure I have read. There are a few others that I have read parts of or one of three in a series which I did not highlight. All in all, not a bad list!

1 The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
2 The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4 The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
6 The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
7 To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
8 The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
9 My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
10 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
11 The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
12 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
13 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
14 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
15 Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
16 Magician by Raymond E. Feist
17 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
18 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
19 Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
20 The Host by Stephenie Meyer
21 Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
22 Atonement by Ian McEwan
23 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
24 Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
25 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
26 Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
27 Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
28 The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
29 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
30 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
31 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
32 Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden
33 Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
34 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
35 The Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini
36 The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
37 Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
38 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
39 The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
40 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
41 Ice Station by Matthew Reilly
42 The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
43 Persuasion by Jane Austen
44 Tully by Paullina Simons
45 Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly
46 Breath by Tim Winton
47 The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare
48 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
49 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
50 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
51 Emma by Jane Austen
52 The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
53 The Bible
54 Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly
55 A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey
56 We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
57 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
58 Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
59 The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
60 The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
61 People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
62 The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
63 The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
64 Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
65 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
66 The Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlaine Harris
67 Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
68 Five Greatest Warriors by Matthew Reilly
69 On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
70 The Princess Bride by William Goldman
71 The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
72 Wicked by Gregory Maguire
73 Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
74 Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
75 Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
76 Dewey by Vicki Myron
77 Dirt Music by Tim Winton
78 Marley and Me by John Grogan
79 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
80 Dune by Frank Herbert
81 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
82 The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
83 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
84 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
85 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
86 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
87 The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
88 The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
89 Possession by AS Byatt
90 Finnikin of The Rock by Melina Marchetta
91 No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
92 Graceling by Kristin Cashore
93 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
94 The Secret History by Donna Tartt
95 Silent Country by Di Morrissey
96 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
97 Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
98 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
99 Still Alice by Lisa Genova
100 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
101 Gallipoli by Les Carlyon

Which ones have you read? Leave a link so I can visit your list. Also check back later today to see my review of Hidden Child, another Holocaust book for children - this time it will only be posted on my blog dedicated to these resources...Holocaust Resources.

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival by Clara Kramer is an amazing story of survival. In addition to surviving with 17 other people in the dug-out basement of a house for 18 months, fifteen year old Clara (at the insistence of her mother) kept a written record of their day to day lives, the fears and sorrows, and the joys. The details of living under such stress are the moments which make this such a compelling story.

As if living under a house in a crawl space dug out with your own hands is not enough, it is incredible who lived above them in the house. Initially the house was inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Beck who were both German. Before the war, Julia Beck has served as a maid for Clara's family and she convinced her husband, who was known to be anti-Semetic, to allow the families to hide under their house. In addition, the house was inhabited by Nazi trainmen and Nazi soldiers. Many times, the Jewish families lives were saved by only seconds of time - time to hide, time to eat, time to cry. After the war Clara and her family returned to their own home which became a gathering place for the mere fifty surviving Jews of the 5,000 who had lived in Zolkiew Poland before the war. I was stunned, but not terribly surprised, by Clara's statement after her return to life:

From the stories the survivors told us, I realized we had it better than most. (p. 310)

Still, for me, the most poignant paragraph in the book was written in Clara's diary near the end of the war, with the enemy in the rooms above them and the Becks under suspicion:

Tuesday, 9 May 1944. You could think that a person who looks into the eyes of death as many times as we do would get used to it. But it's the opposite with us. The more we are in danger of dying, the more we are frightened. One wants to live no matter what and no matter how. Every day we look death in the eyes and every day has its own history. If at least we had a verdict, a time, how long we will suffer. We are sitting here and we don't even know if it's for nothing. (p. 262)

To continue on day after day, not knowing when it would end - or how it would end had to have been such an emotional strain and yet these 18 people survived. Ultimately Julia and Valentine Beck were honored at Yad Vashem in Israel. The Beck's daughter, Ala, who lived in the house with the eighteen survivors for most of the war came to the service and planted a tree in the Garden of the Righteous. And Clara - she tries still to live her life worthy of the Becks and her sister Mania who died trying to escape the basement during a fire. She considers her work on Holocaust education a large part of her obligation to these people she loved so much.

Harper Collins provides the reader with the following message from the author (this is also in the book):
4/6/2009
To the Readers of Clara's War
Writing this book was like walking out of my kitchen door in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and straight into my home in Zolkiew. Although the events in this book happened over 60 years ago, they have never left me. As with many survivors, I relive them in the present. I am 81 years old, and I am one of the lucky ones. Ever since the day I left the bunker, I have done my best to live a worthy life. I have dedicated myself to the teaching of the Holocaust. The privilege of surviving comes with the responsibility of sharing the story of those who did not. Everything in this book is as I lived and remember it, although I have taken the liberty of reconstructing dialogue to the best of my recollection. I have also used the spelling and names most familiar to me. During the 18 months I spent in the bunker, I kept a diary which today is in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There was little light and less paper and only one nub of a pencil to write with. I documented as much as I could in my diary, but although I often spoke about my life, the idea of writing about it never occurred to me. Thank you (to my cowriter) for encouraging me and for taking this journey with me back to Zolkiew. And thank you for capturing my life so beautifully on paper. I am so grateful that my great-great-grandchildren will be able to meet those of us who came before.

From my memory to theirs, and to yours—

Clara Kramer
{accessed at http://www.harpercollins.com/author/microsite/news.aspx?authorid=35107&newsid=5447#5447}

And here is a YouTube video made by the author.

TITLE: Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival
AUTHOR: Clara Kramer
CO-AUTHOR: Stephen Glantz
COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 339
TYPE: non-fiction
RECOMMEND: A moving story of heroism and determination.
AWARDS: 2010 Sophy Brody Honor Book

Sunday Sidelines

Welcome to my Sunday Sidelines. This is just a mish-mash of what I am thinking about this week. I hope that you will leave a comment telling me what you are thinking!

Here is something fun I do every Sunday. It is Unconscious Mutterings hosted by Luna Nina. She supplies the words, you supply the associations. And check out what others are associating!

1. Philanthropy :: buy a cow


2. Said :: well


3. Blanks :: fill in the


4. Tapas :: Spanish


5. Orgasm :: Ummmm


6. Movement :: slight


7. Detention :: in trouble


8. Restaurant :: Chili's


9. Weird :: and strange


10. Sniffle :: snort

WOW - now what I am really excited about. I am excited about BASKETBALL!! In particular, I am excited about Butler. And that is saying something for me, since my daughter reminded me last night that she had a Duke hat and a Duke t-shirt growing up because I was undeniably a Duke fan. And I won't be crushed if they win the championship, but I am really pulling for Butler. As for the women - well who can win other than UConn. But know I will be watching tonight.

While I am not watching basketball this weekend, I have been sitting at my desk at home grading student projects. Sugar Pie doesn't like to hang without me, so I bought a baby sling and she happily snuggles up in it while I am at the computer. The other three chihuahuas are too big for it and a bit jealous, but that it the perk of being the smallest. She has food in her little pouch and is quite content to sit there as long as I do. Such a little love.

Well, wishing you all a blessed day.

Donna

The Cat with the Yellow Star

Fate is an interesting thing. I ordered this book from our Interlibrary Loan department without really knowing the story. Of course, I knew it was a Holocaust book for children, but I was wonderfully surprised when I realized that this book was written by one of the Girls of Room 28. (I reviewed this book a short time back.) Room 28 was a room at the Children's Home at Terezin, a holding camp or ghetto in Czechoslovakia. A key element in both books is the children's opera Brundibar. I also reviewed a children's book retelling the opera Brundibar. But back to fate, when I got the book, I flipped through the 40 pages and found a page of photographs - the page looked almost like a yearbook page with fourteen photos of young girls - Handa, Eva, Hanka, Marianne, Lenka, Anna, Helga...I knew them all! It was like seeing photos of friends from middle school. I was elated to know these women through these stories. And very excited to read another book about their blessed experience during the Holocaust.

In some ways, Cat with the Yellow Star, written by Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger, is a more intimate look at the experiences of the girls of Room 28. Maybe it feels that way because the words are crafted for a younger audience and therefore feel like a story shared by only a few. I am so thankful that Ela shared her story and photographs with Susan. It was interesting to learn that the women who were caretakers for the girls of Room 28 made sure the children learned their manners and kept clean in an easily overwhelming environment.

Ela starred as the cat in the children's opera Brundibar. She talks, as did the previous author, about the importance of these artistic endeavors for the children of Terezin. I knew that the Nazis had promoted Terezin as a model camp and invited the International Red Cross to view how well the Jewish people were taken care of. I did not know that the children performed their opera for the Red Cross in June 1944. Apparently the Red Cross believed what they saw in 1944. They learned the truth about Terezin when the camp was turned over to them by the Nazis on May 3, 1945. This is when Eva was liberated.

Still this was not the end of Brundibar. Fifteen of the children of Room 28 survived the war and since 1986 they have joined one another once a year to enjoy talking about their lives. Ela continues to hear her beloved opera - performed by children all over the world. After one such performance on December 7, 2003 at the Simon Wiesenthal Center - Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Ela spoke to the audience:

Sixty years ago we performed this opera at Terezin. Only a few of us survived. I lost many of my friends. But when we were performing Brundibar, we forgot where we were, we forgot all our troubles. Music was part of our resistance against the Nazis. Music, art, good teachers, and friends meant survival. (p. 35)

Holiday House provides a wonderful Educator's Guide for this title.

TITLE: The Cat with the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin
AUTHOR: Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger
COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 40
TYPE: Holocaust narrative, non-fiction
RECOMMEND: I learned a lot from this small book and the images included are very interesting. It certainly could be used in conjunction with Brundibar. I really liked this book.

The Lotus Eaters

Let me begin this review with thanks to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. The Lotus Eaters is a beautifully written novel winding through the nightmare that was the Viet Nam War. It takes me back to the summer I graduated from high school. In 1971, the student president visited Paris for Peace Talks and returned in sadness that the war was to continue, even in the strange and different form it had taken.

Soli’s novel is the story of Helen Adams, who is an American photojournalist, trying first to recover what she has lost in Viet Nam – her brother, who was killed. Adams is unprepared for the life she will live in Viet Nam. As she adapts to her new normal, which includes dead women and children as well as suffering on both sides, Helen falls in love with Darrow, a fellow photojournalist who is constantly chasing the next big story. Linh, Darrow’s assistant and a man torn between two countries, becomes Helen’s lover and friend. Soli explores the complex relationship that blossoms between these three people who are experiencing their own inner wars over the span of the novel.

What intrigued me most about this novel is the development of Helen. When she first arrives in Viet Nam, she begs to be embedded with the troops. Her first experience was this:

Her mouth was dry, air scraped the shallows of her lungs, as the reality of where she was took hold. Shivering from the foreign rush of terror, she felt a warm, wet sensation, and burned at the realization that she had peed herself….Nothing had prepared her for the smallness of the moment. The moment to moment boredom. Intellectually, yes, there were people on the enemy side trying to kill them. American men might die, but that was all television stuff. Being on the flat land, pricked by the dying grass, the idea that she herself could be the target of a bullet became real. (p. 92)

Over the years, Helen lost her fear. But of course, the reader wonders what else was lost with the fear. And what was gained. The novel allows for several voices to be heard and Linh’s portrait of both North and South Viet Nam during the war is beautiful and harrowing. In the end, with the war neither won nor lost, Helen wonders as she prepares to leave:

Ten years ago it had seemed the war would never end, and now all she could think, was More time, give us more time. She would continue till the end although she had lost faith in the power of pictures, because the work had become an end in itself, untethered to results or outcomes. (p. 5)

So different from the statement made by Darrow regarding why they were in Viet Nam:

“Sometimes you have to fulfill a promise in order to deserve the love you’re given. Don’t you think it’s a calling to live in danger just to capture the face of those who are suffering? To show their invisible lives to the world?” (p. 89)

Don’t miss this phenomenal book. Reading, Writing and Retirement also has a review of The Lotus Eaters. If you have time, sneak over and read her excellent review. If you are interested in the topic of Viet Nam, I also recommend Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

TITLE: The Lotus Eaters: A Novel
AUTHOR: Tatjana Soli
COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 386
TYPE: fiction
RECOMMEND: I highly recommend this book as it is beautifully written and carries a powerful message.

Sunday Sidelines

I have a new meme, Sunday Sidelines. Many of us have blogs dedicated to one thing or another. Reading the many posts by different bloggers, we come to know them. Sunday Sidelines is an opportunity to step outside of the normal blog post and share something that is on your sidelines. If you would like to join in, just leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.




Perhaps it is possible
to be gentle no matter what, to seek not restraint
but surrender entirely, to turn
from the snarling reproach not into the keening
dismissal of hope but to whatever bright
fluttering is next, the bright fluttering
of wisteria petals, a felicitous
phrase, fingers touching
a face. ...
- From "Fuschia" by Charlie Smith







I love this single fluttering of wisteria petals on my back fence. It reminds me that spring is coming. Soon the backyard will be filled with people swimming, sunning, and eating...family time will be tripled. I am anxious for this to begin.


Poem: "Fuschia" by Charlie Smith via PoetryFoundation.org From Indistinguishable from the Darkness. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990.

Cupcake Giveaway

Click on the photo above for a chance to win Bertie, a beautiful Kitchen Aid mixer or three other wonderful prizes.