This week I didn’t read to much due to the holidays but I did get a few books in. I hope that you guys had a great holiday! Did you get any books as presents? I still have to have Christmas with my parents, which will be in January so I’m not sure if I got any more books yet. I do a gift exchange on Litsy every year for Christmas and this year my secret Santa got me The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, some candy, a cute woodland themed mug, and some socks! I also got some great sushi socks from my coworker at the library that I love! But without further ado, onto the books!
This is a book about Art Spiegelman’s parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, and their journey through World War Two. Vladek is recounting his tale to his son Art who is the illustrator and author of this book. The book goes back and forth between WW2 and the present day. I’m not going to beat around the bush; this is a horrible story. His father recounts being a POW (prisoner of war), losing his family members one by one, going to Auschwitz, and just being dehumanized by the Germans in countless different ways. But just because this book deals with painful subject matter does not mean that it was a terrible book. I quite enjoyed the book myself even though there were sections that were difficult to read. A specific section that dealt with the German troops killing young children will haunt me for quite awhile. I would highly recommend this book. Especially if you are a history buff or would just like to read an interesting true story. Five out of five stars.
I talked about this book in my last post a little bit. I’d like to go in to more depth now of what I thought about it. I really liked this book despite this one also dealing with heavy subject matter. This book is about the author, David Small, and his childhood growing up with his family in Detroit. His father was a physician and his mother was a stay at home mom. Throughout his childhood, Small was a sickly but gifted child. Thinking that he could cure him of his illnesses his father gave him radiation treatments. This continued through most of his childhood. When David was a teen a growth developed on his neck. He went in for a routine surgery and woke up with half of his vocal chords missing, unable to speak. What his parents didn’t tell him was that the treatments that his father was giving him as a child possibly caused him to get cancer. This book is fantastic but deals with a lot of heavy issues. I would highly recommend this book to fans of biographies, auto biographies, or memoirs.
I have been reading this manga series since September of this year. I’ve watched the television show and have read most of the books before so up until recently, these books have been a re-read for me. Right now I am just about to start volume 15 (out of 26) so I’m a little over halfway through with the series. I really love this series as it was one of the first manga that I watched/read as a kid. I wanted to re-read it because I don’t remember the second half of the series very well. I’m loving the re-read so far and I can’t wait to finish the series!
That is all for this week! Like I said earlier, I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season and Happy New Year! I will see you all in 2019! Come say hi on Twitter!