Morbid Curiosity?

I have this strange, morbid interest in the Holocaust. I think a lot of people do, but I'm not totally sure why, and I'm not really all that OK with it.

I find it so horrifying and awful it literally makes me sick sometimes. I can give you a pretty decent list of Historical Fiction novels I have read that involve the Holocaust (Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth, Sarah's Key, The Kommandant's Girl, Those Who Save Us, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas... those are just the ones I though of as I sit in front of this computer, I know there are probably a dozen more), as well as a few Non-Fiction titles. The Diary of Anne Frank is the standard, and one that a lot of people have read. It was the first one I ever read, as I'm sure it is for many, and I learned of the desperation of the Jewish people. Elie Wiesel's Night is a particularily good one; It's a short read, but no less devastating. This one is more first hand accounts of what happened to him in the camps, whereas Anne Frank wrote about trying to avoid going to them in the first place. One I particularly found enlightening is Auschwitz: A New History (seen below). I liked this one because I learned so much more about it. Things like the companies that benefited from slave labour or experimentation on people, and the racism that still exists in Germany to this day.

I am also a sucker for documentaries. I went to one at the Broadway a couple of years ago called A Film Unfinished that was a mixture of the devistation of living in the Ghettos in Poland as well as propoganda that was made for distribution about the Ghettos. It was a strange mix of reality as well as complete fiction. Very strange. I just watched one on Netflix the other day called The Last Days which was all about when Hungary was invaded and the Hungarian Jews were moved swiftly to the camps for extermination in the last few months of the war.

After having read so much and seen so many documentaries about the Holocaust, I didn't think there was much more that I could learn, but I was proven wrong. In the first few minutes of this documentary it is stated that even when the Nazis had realized that they were going to lose the war, instead of stopping the extermination of Jewish people in order to save face with the Allies or make more funds for the war effort, they doubled their efforts in an attempt to complete the Final Soloution before the war was over.

Let me just let that sink in for a minute. Because I needed it to...

...
..
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WTF! That BLEW MY MIND! I had never thought of it that way before. Why the hell didn't the Nazi's just stop!? Because, they were more concerned with their war on Jewish People than the war they were fighting the Allies. What. The. Hell.

Is this why I am so interested in an event that killed so many people in such a (relatively) short time? Because to me it is completely unfathomable that people can be SO EVIL? How people can be SO BLINDED by hate? How people can find ways justify murdering people for absolutely no reason?

I am not searching for understanding of why the Holocaust happened. Because I think something like that is beyond anyone's understanding. But I am interested in figuring out why I find it so intriguing.

Thoughts? Anyone?

eReader: 1st Impressions

Willful Blindness was my first library book on the eReader I got for Xmas. So after completing at least one book on my eReader, I've got a few opinions on what I like and dislike about it. These are my initial pros and cons...

Pros:
- Brayden got me a case, so my book comes with a built in booklight. VERY convenient .. cuz I don't know where my actual book light is right now...
- Don't have to worry about damaging a spine! Holla!
- Have you ever been reading a book in bed, and gotten comfortable reading on your side, and then when you have to read the next page (whether it is by flipping the page or just adjusting the position of the book) it's not nearly as comfortable anymore? Not a problem with the eReader!

Cons:
- I find it irritating to flip forward to see how much longer a chapter is. I do this often with my real books, because sometimes I need to know how much longer a chapter is to determine whether I should stop where I am, or keep reading until the chapter ends.
- Sometimes, the ereader buggers up the book. Like, all of a sudden it will jump ahead by a page or it will have the same page twice in a row. If I go onto the computer, the book is fine on there... so... I'm not sure why this happens
- Sometimes, when I just stop reading the ereader without turning it off, and it goes into sleep mode (which is kinda a 'pro' itself), but then it puts me either a page back or a page forward when I turn it back on.


So, there aren't any real deal breakers either way with this one. So far so good, I suppose. But the whole nuance of an actual book can't be replaced with an ereader, but the convenience and lack of damage to an ereader are definite pluses!

IF you have an ereader, I'd love to hear your pros and cons too!

TEDtalks (and Willful Blindness)

I LOVE watching TEDtalks. I have learned a great many things from these (relatively) short videos. I was introduced to Sir Ken Robinson back in '07 through TEDtalks when my English Curriculum teacher showed it to us. It's one of my favourite TEDtalks videos to this day (It's called Do Schools Kill Creativity? if you want to look it up). It's so impressive how many people have such great knowledge and insight into human behaviour or abilities or whatever. Some of these people can be academics, like Ken Robinson and Margaret Heffernan, and others are just lecturers with great experiences we can all learn from, like Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman. There is SO much knowledge that can be shared in this world and it is wonderful that we now have the means to share it so easily. This also reminds me how much I can learn from other people who are not specifically TRYING to teach me things. Everyone around you has different abilities and knowledge that you can learn from if you just listen. It's impossible to know everything, but everyone knows something...

The book I am going to review today is one that I discovered through TEDtalks. A friend posted the video on facebook (It is posted AFTER my review for a perfectly good reason;)) I was SO blown away by the concept that I searched Margaret Heffernan on McNally Robinson's website and found that she had written this book. So Ta-da!

I LOVE watching these videos so if you have a good one, please let me know! I'd love to watch more, but am too lazy to try and search through them all to find good ones. :)

~*~

Margaret Heffernan argues that the biggest threats and dangers we face are the ones we don't see--not because they're secret or invisible, but because we're willfully blind. A distinguished businesswoman and writer, she examines the phenomenon and traces its imprint in our private and working lives, and within governments and organizations, and asks: What makes us prefer ignorance? What are we so afraid of? Why do some people see more than others? And how can we change?
Covering everything from our choice of mates to the SEC, Bernard Madoff's investors, the embers of BP's refinery, the military in Afghanistan, and the dog-eat-dog world of subprime mortgage lenders, this provocative book demonstrates how failing to see--or admit to ourselves or our colleagues--the issues and problems in plain sight can ruin private lives and bring down corporations. Heffernan explains how willful blindness develops before exploring ways that institutions and individuals can combat it. In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Heffernan's Willful Blindness is a tour de force on human behavior that will open your eyes.

This book is an amazing observation about one of the many aspects of human social behaviour. I believe it was intended to expose something within ourselves to make changes to, and help others to observe these traits in themselves and also make changes, in order to make a better adapted world.

It was extremely interesting and overwhelmingly supported by evidence that takes many different forms from many different areas of the world, but mostly western cultures. She talks about the willful blindness of people who believe in apocalyptic situations that turn out to not happen, to the mindset of white collar criminals that justify their behaviours. One of the most moving examples is actually one she discusses in her TEDtalks video Dare to Disagree. Alice Stewart discovered that xray machines were causing many childhood cancers back in the 1950s. In the TEDtalks video she talks about how conflict ensured that Stewart knew she was right because she had people trying to disprove her, that couldn't. In Willful Blindness, it talks more about how other doctors refused to see the truth because it would mean that they would have to change their practices, and no one likes change. They convinced themselves that her research was wrong, chose to be willfully blind, so that they wouldn't have to admit that what they were doing was wrong. It is absolutely staggering to read these accounts, something that seems to blatantly obvious to the reader (who also happens to be living 60 years after the research was proven, and 30+ years since the practice has been removed). This book was extremely informative and, in my opinion, important that everyone reads...

Now... that being said... I am not an avid non-fiction reader. As wonderfully informative as this book is, and as important as the subject matter is, I was DYING for this book to be over. I felt that I got the point after about 3 chapters, but there was so much evidence in so many different situations that this book seemed to go on forever, but I couldn't just stop reading it. Every single chapter made important points, and it wasn't like the last chapters were less interesting than the first. It was just so much of the same throughout the whole book. I made myself finish this one before I let myself reread Harry Potter... that was the only way I finished this one. Plus it was a library ebook... so it was going to disappear tomorrow and I didn't want to borrow it for a third time.

I think this whole book could have been a 15-minute TEDtalks video and I would have gotten the same out of it, it's too bad the one she did took a different perspective on an example she used in the book, but I guess she wouldn't sell as many books if she gave all the info away in a video that could be found on YouTube. 

If you are interested in Cultural Studies, or generally prefer reading non-fiction to fiction, this book is excellent. But for us fiction fans, it was a little tough go. 

But watch this video no matter who you are...

Happy Early Birthday To Me!

I was feeling a little sorry for myself last week when Roland was in Vancouver, which is where I would rather have been, but sometimes things don't quite happen as you would like them to. In order to make myself feel better, I indulged in a little retail therapy. These beauties arrived in the mail today...

This is the Adult Cover Hardcover Boxed Set of the Harry Potter Series. They are beautiful...

It may also surprise some of you that prior to this I did not own my own copies of the Harry Potter series. When I first started reading them, I borrowed my brother's copies. Once I was caught up to the point of reading all the ones that were published, I would work at Coles on the day the books were released and then I would read them on my breaks and, if necessary, borrow a copy to take home (for the record, there was a whole process of doing this, I did not steal them and then bring them back... which it kinda sounds like if you have never worked in a bookstore) It got interesting when the last book came out, and Roland and I had both read up until that point and the first day I borrowed a copy to bring home we got in a bit of a fight over who gets to read it. I had gone out with some friends, and told him when I came back I would want it back. He stated that if he was done I could  have it, but it was first come first served. It resulted in him going out and buying his own copy and we would both sit on the couch and read at the same time. I think those were the most romantic moments of my life...

So, we, of course, have Roland's copies of the books in the house, but those are not mine. I wouldn't even be able to get mad if someone wrecked them! So I needed my own copies of them. Once I have my own Roland can ruin his all he likes.

See? SO pretty...

I had had my eye on this since I first saw the Order of the Phoenix cover when the book was first released. It is SO pretty. And then Half Blood Prince came out, and it was also a very nice cover, so I think I decided as long as the last book's cover was also nice I would dish out the big bucks for the boxed set. The problem was that once the last book came out, and the cover was acceptable, I was still in school and still working at Coles (hadn't even made my big move to McNally yet) and I was dirt poor. I mean, what student has $150+ to drop on a boxed set of books that are not textbooks? Then I had planned to get them while I was still working at McNally, but then I was still a student, still poor, and when I did finish school and I was substitute teaching money was really unpredictable and I had a mortgage to pay.

So I procrastinated  and procrastinated, and procrastinated, until last week.... well, a little before that, because I TRIED to get this from McNally, but apparently they can't get it anymore. They could order me all of the books individually, but the box is great for protecting and preserving the integrity of the books. I kinda panicked a bit, that I wouldn't be able to get them anywhere, but  I went to the least evil of my next choices, which was Indigo online, and it was available. So. Done and Done.

New home for a few of my boxed sets

And yes, I will actually read these copies. For one, I have to make sure that there are no printing errors in any of the books. Ya know, like a chunk of pages printed twice, or skipping 20 pages. I've had it happen before so much check that. And plus, ALL books should be read at least once.

I may start reading them tonight. Which might mean that there won't be a review for quite a while. Just a heads up. ;)

Mockingjay

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what's worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss's family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins's groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.


I'm glad that I waited a day to write this review, because after completing it last night, I was ready to shred this book (Metaphorically, of course. With my review, not with something that would, ya know, cause damage to my book) After 24 hours of hindsight, I have changed my mind completely. This book is awesome.

One of the things that made me mad last night was the ending. It wasn't nearly happy enough for me. I wanted things to end peachy-keen, like most kids books generally do. I'm a sucker for a happy ending. This book wrapped everything up nicely, but I wasn't satisfied that all was well in the end. However, in hindsight, it's WAY better this way. This ending is not all sunshine and rainbows because it's a book about FREAKIN' WAR! It cannot be expected for everything to be happy after so many people are killed. The devastation and mental and physical pain that people have gone through in this book are tremendous. In real life, people take decades to get over going through similar traumas that these people went through, if they get over them at all. This book really leaves you feeling like I'm sure people with PTSD do. Fabulous ending. Fabulous.

The other interesting thing about my epiphany about the ending is that I just criticized The Weird Sisters about not being realistic enough and it was one of those "peachy-keen" endings. Just took me a day to realize that Mockingjay ended it right. Go figure.

After reading all three of these books, I look back and really appreciate how they were formatted and laid out as a trilogy. The first book was formulating how this corrupt, evil government was running, and how they controlled their citizens. The second shows political unrest and the potential for an uprising, and the third is all out war. Each had it's specific purpose and I thought all of them were done well.

Overall, I think my favourite book in the series is still Catching Fire. The first book was a good stand alone. Had the other two not been written, it would have been good as a single novel. But, as I generally find with first books in a series (Harry Potter included) the first book takes so much time explaining an entire society or doing character development that it doesn't compare well to the other books in the series plotwise. Mockingjay was a great finale book, and the reason I didn't like it quite as much as Catching Fire is because of how I felt reading them. In Catching Fire, I couldn't wait to read what was going to happen next (I phrased it in my review of that one as feeling like I couldn't read fast enough). With Mockingjay, I almost just wanted to skip to the end to see how it finished. I didn't of course, and it's not like the stuff in the middle of that book wasn't important, it was, I was just so anxious to get to the end that I didn't really care what happened before that.

This is a great series that I would recommend to just about anyone. It's a bit dark and violent as a teen series, but it is so compelling and the characters are so great that I think everyone can take something away from it.

Bloggess' Chicken

This is a blog post that everyone should read. One of my friends from Education posted it on FB and so I checked it out. Everyone should read this.

And That's Why You Should Pick Your Battles

I laughed so hard, I cried. I haven't laughed like that in a long time. I'm not sure if it's because I'm a little overtired, but even if it is...

Read it!

And please tell me that you laughed. If I get zero comments on this, I will be disappointed that no one laughed.

P.S. I finished Mockingjay tonight. Will post about it tomorrow, methinks. I have quite a bit to say about it. But am too tired and in too good of a mood (after reading the above blog post) to post about it right now...

You have no idea how much this excited me....

This is such a total coincidence. I had no idea that this was the cover of Entertainment Weekly this week...

...I almost peed myself when I pulled this out of the mailbox. In fact, I jumped up and down a bit and squealed.

Another great part is that I didn't really want to get a subscription to this mag, but in order for Brayden to get a little prize at school, I decided it would be ok. The timing of this is worth the whole subscription.

Fabulous....

I am SO stoked about this...

Who needs chocolate or sex when you can have A WHOLE ARTICLE WRITTEN ABOUT THE BOOK YOU JUST FINISHED YESTERDAY!!!

Highlight of my week. I just can't get over it...

The Hunger Games (and Catching Fire)

Before I delve into the book review for Catching Fire, the second book in the Hunger Games Trilogy, I feel I need to go back and talk about the first book a little bit.

The Hunger Games is one of those books that I read because I wanted to go see the movie, which got a lot of hype before it's release date. I didn't really know too much about it before I read it and I always kinda like it that way if I can get away with it. The film adaptation is wonderful, contrary to some of the media surrounding the movie. (There were a bunch of complaints about casting choice, all of those arguments were stupid in my opinion. It was cast fabulously)  If you are on the fence about whether or not to read it, see the movie.

I enjoyed the first book, although it's one of those concepts that's not really new, which I have a little more trouble accepting and really LOVING the book. The basis of the Hunger Games is that it's all about a dystopian society where the government makes kids survive in a highly controlled, often brutal, environment and fight to the death for entertainment. The oldest novel I am familiar with, that this concept could have originated from (but please state other references that are older if you know them!) is Lord of the Flies. Now, these two novels are quite different insofar as that in LotF, the kids are stranded by accident, and no one is watching them. BUT I think it lends itself to the idea of people gambling on who would survive the longest and what skills are best for making that happen. Another more closely related novel is Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. That one I haven't read myself, but a coworker at work picked it for a staff pick (He came in second to me, see the list here), and it sounded like something my husband might like, so I got it for him and heard about it in a somewhat editted form. It's a very similar plot line, although the kids in BR were all from the same class, which was chosen at random, whereas in HG two kids from each town were picked at random. Otherwise, they sound equally as brutal in execution. Anywhoo, HG is a rehashing of something that's been done before, just like the vampire loving the human thing in Twilight (and Buffy and True Blood....), so it loses a little credibility with me for that. Another problem with doing something that's been done before is that it becomes extremely predictable, as is the case with HG. I could have told you within the first 50 pages how it was going to end.

But otherwise it was a really enjoyable novel. I was still pretty surprised that it is classified as a teen novel, as I said, it's pretty brutal with all of the kids murdering kids stuff. Perhaps the writing style gets it the teen classification? Who knows. But once you get past the twisted disgusting concept, the book is quite encapturing. The characters are interesting, likable, and relatable. It's a pretty fast paced read. All in all, it gets the thumbs up from me.

I took a long time to decide to read the second book though. This is because of how the first one ended. It seemed well wrapped up enough that I didn't really feel the need to jump in to the second one to find out what happens next. I was completely content with my "Happily Ever After" delusion. But then I got some Scholastic Book Orders sent home and they were listed pretty cheap, so I bought Catching Fire (#2), and Mockingjay (#3).

These are important books to read in order, so if you haven't read The Hunger Games, I suggest not even reading the description of Catching Fire or my review.

~*~

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before...and surprising readers at every turn.

This book took me 3 days to read. And that is saying something considering that I am also parenting an 8.5 month old. I think had I read this before I had her, I would have finished this in a night. I could not put the book down.

I have heard that many people think this is the weakest book in the trilogy, but I thought it was better than the first. With very little character development needed, and a more political edge to the story, the book moves along very quickly and sometimes I felt that I couldn't read fast enough because I was so excited to know where the story was going.

Unlike the first book, I found this one was not predictable in the least. I never knew what was going to happen next and my predictions as to how this book would end were completely wrong, and I was happy with what they did instead.

I intend on starting Mockingjay tonight, because (also unlike the previous book), I can't wait to find out what happens next.

The Weird Sisters

The three Andreas sisters grew up in the cloistered household dominated by their Shakespearean professor father, a prominent, eccentric academic whose reverence for the Bard left its imprint on his daughters' names: Rosalind (As You Like It), Bianca (The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordelia (King Lear). The siblings eventually left home and escaped their ponderous monikers with nicknames, but their mother's medical maladies brings them back. Before long, their unwelcome reunion reveals that they all have problems: Rose is force-feeding a troubled relationship; Bean is entangled in a big city case of embezzlement; and unmarried Cordy is pregnant. Eleanor Brown's first fiction has justly won praise as "thought-provoking... poignant... sparkling and devourable."


To be honest, I really don't have much to say about this book.

It had great potential. I thought the concept was spectacular when I picked it up. I am a great lover of Shakespeare and the namesakes of the three sisters are really interesting characters, but really, it just left me with a "meh" feeling. There really was no big climax in the novel, nothing shocking really happened.

The storylines with the three sisters seemed to start to lead in one direction, and then anticlimatically change to something you don't really expect and is not nearly as interesting. The only storyline that I really felt was true to her namesake and did what I thought she would was Cordy. The other two had a lot of build up... to nothing.

I also find it frustrating when a character is introduced right at the beginning of the novel [SPOILER ALERT] with cancer, it gets progressivly worse throughout the novel. Lots of Chemo, then radiation, then a clot that almost kills her... and then all of a sudden it's gone. Hurray! Everyone lives! Cancer's not a big deal after all! [/sarcasm]

[END OF SPOILER, you can keep reading now...]

I also think it would have been more interesting if she had used Miranda (The Tempest) instead of Rosalind. Not that Rosalind isn't a great character, but I think Miranda would have lead to more drama. May have spiced up the book a bit more and given me something to rave about.