Karl's Reading List

Published by Collins: London and Glasgow, 1963. I had the wrong idea about what this book was to begin with. Not drastically wrong, but just wrong enough that there were points I began questioning whether I was reading what I thought I was reading. What I thought I was reading was the book that inspired the movie Bridge on the River Kwai. I've never seen that movie, but I know it was popular when it came out, and it is one I'd like to see eventually. It turns out, though, that Bridge is a fictional story based around the building of an actual bridge on an actual River Kwai by British prisoners-of-war, and that Miracle is the non-fiction account of one of those prisoners. The bridge itself is only mentioned briefly. At points it is quite intense, as many prisoner-of-war stories (and, sadly, especially prisoner-of-war stories set in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps) can be. And this intensity is added to by the way the author describes the spiritual journey of the prisoners in ques...

Published by Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, NSW, Australia, 2008. Book snobs, block your ears. *whispers* I think the movie was better. Okay, book snobs, you can unblock your ears now. *waves to get the attention of book snobs* To be honest, a huge reason why I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society at this moment in time was that I thought it would be funny to have two books with ridiculously long titles appear back-to-back in my list. For anyone who thought that there were super-deep reasons why I picked the books that I did, I hope this helps you see the error of your ways. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which I am refusing to shorten for the rest of this review) still tells the same story as that in the movie adaptation (also called  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ), but does so in a less gripping (though still interesting) manner. This is for a few reasons: firstly,  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ...

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC: New York, NY, 2016. I made it! This is the 26th and final book in my Alphabet Soup reading challenge. I finished the first book in this challenge on the 11th of August last year, having started it a week earlier. So, finishing in May means it took me 9 months to finish this challenge. I suppose I could have done it quicker if I only read Alphabet Soup books, but where would be the fun in that! Anyway, Judenstaat is a strange book. It falls into the 'alternate history' category of fiction, with this world having a slightly different outcome for the Jewish people post-World War 2. Instead of being granted a state of their own in Palestine (aka, the modern nation of Israel), they are instead granted a state of their own within the borders of Germany. This is justified both as a sort of punishment for Germany's acts of atrocity, and also as a statement of resilience from the Jewish people - that the place where they have faced their w...

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing: USA, 2014. As I make my way through the Alphabet Soup Challenge from my local library, I sometimes find myself in the library skimming various books to find something that looks interesting (and hopefully is not too unpleasant in content). 'N' was not one of the biggest sections on display (though I was pleased to see a few 'Nicholls'... maybe someday I'll join them), and so I skimmed a few books that seemed a little more random than I usually would. When I skimmed this one, something in the way it was written jumped out at me, and made me curious enough to commit to the whole book... The Wives of Los Alamos is told in a first-person-plural voice. That is to say, the narrator's voice throughout the book is "we", and at no point is the voice identified as belonging to any one character. Rather, the book is being told simultaneously from the perspective of all the wives of Los Alamos. This is a fascinating choice of s...

Published by Coronet Books/Hodder and Stoughton/Hemisphere Publishers Ltd: Great Britain, 1983 (1982). What a book to end the year with! Schindler's Ark is the book that inspired the movie Schindler's List (and is known by the latter name in some countries). It is also a Booker book, which meant I really had no idea what I was in for. The book (and the movie) tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German factory owner living in the Polish city of Crakow during World War 2, relating how he saved the lives of about 1200 Jews by labelling them as 'essential workers'. Stating it that way makes it sound as though Schindler did very little 'heroic', yet throughout the book he continually takes big risks to achieve his goal, both in terms of his own safety, and also in financial terms. The book, being about Jews in WW2, is obviously not a 'light' book, yet Keneally tells it in a way that really 'works'. His style here is an interesting one; he tells...

Published by Pickering and Inglis Ltd.: London, 1975 (1969). This book tells the true story of the author's life as a young Jewish woman living in Holland during World War 2, and can be roughly divided into three parts. The first part tells of the numerous close calls Johanna had with being sent to the prison camps. As the story progresses her whole family gets taken away, yet Johanna repeatedly is saved through various unexpected events such as looking after a sick child, or being rejected by a carriage full of elderly people who worry about her health. The fact that so many of these events take place when so many other people are being taken away to their death is fascinating, and ties nicely into the second 'part' of the book.  In the second part, Johanna, now concealed by the Underground resistance in the house of a Christian minister, begins to read a Children's Bible - mostly out of boredom - and discovers to her amazement that Jesus is Jewish! As she learns this,...

Published by Paul Brand Publishing: Seattle, WA, 1976. Granny Brand is a missionary biography with a bit of a difference. This is the life story of Evelyn Brand (nee Harris), who went to India as a missionary, fell in love with and married fellow missionary Jesse Brand, and then carried on working in India following Jesse's death from blackwater fever. What makes Evelyn so different from most of the missionaries you read about in these sort of books is that she is portrayed throughout as a fairly stubborn, strong-willed, slightly argumentative woman, happy to butt heads with anyone who doesn't see eye to eye with her. She reminds us that God is looking for willing hearts, rather than particular personalities. In fact, Evelyn's personality helps her to continue ministering in the 'Mountains of Death' region of India even after she officially retires from missionary service. The mission organisation overseeing that region are occasionally shown to be opposed to her ch...

Published by Penguin Books: North Shore, NZ, 2004. This book tells the story of three Maori brothers, Pita, Rangi and Tu, who one by one join the Maori battalion and end up fighting in Egypt and Italy during World War 2. Tu, our narrator, is the youngest of the three, and the vast majority of the book is presented as his journal entries from the war, with an additional framing device being that he is handing these journal pages on to his niece and nephew in order for them to understand their father, Pita, more. While Tu's journal entries are obviously mostly focussed on his own experiences, other chapters are interspersed with the 'journal entries', telling Pita's story in a third-person narrative. It is a little confusing as to how these may or may not be being presented to Tu's nephew and niece, as if we are to take the narrative at face value all of these chapters should be Tu's journal, but obviously are not. However, putting that aside we get a good idea of...

Published by Penguin Books: London, England, 1987. A narrative device that I’m noticing repeat itself in some of the Booker books I have read so far is that of the elderly narrator looking back on their life while also commenting on their actions as an elderly narrator. The Sea was the first one I encountered, and The Blind Assassin was the second; now Moon Tiger has become the third.  Claudia Hampton is now in care, and as she slowly begins to die, she narrates what she claims is a “history of the world” but is in reality a look back at her life, with an occasional historical fact thrown in as embellishment. Her memories are not told chronologically but as they come to her, and cover most of her life, from childhood, to youth (with an incestuous element thrown in for Booker sordidness), to her romance with a soldier during WW2, to her struggles as a mother… The book is written in a simple and easy to read style – until I encountered the first hints of incest I was wondering if...

With Jamie Buckingham. Published by Christian Literature Crusade & Fleming H. Revell Company: Pennsylvania & New Jersey, 1974. More a collection of short anecdotes from her life than a straight-forward narrative, Tramp For The Lord tells of Corrie ten Boom's life and ministry following the events outlined in the book The Hiding Place. The stories don't take place in any chronological or thematic order, but are short bite-sized chunks of faith and challenge from a remarkable evangelist. Corrie came to fame as an unlikely evangelist following her experiences in the concentration camps of World War 2. In Tramp we see her travelling the world by faith, going wherever she feels the Spirit leading and speaking to whomever she feels God prompt her to. In humble and self-deprecating fashion, Corrie often highlights stories in which she has learned 'the hard way' some truth from God, but is also able to gently point to moments where her faith in God has been strong...

Published by Longacre Press: Dunedin, New Zealand, 2008 (1992). This story, based largely on the memories of the author's mother, is a harrowing look at a very tragic part of history. Krystyna is a Polish girl who ends up getting deported to Siberia with her family during World War 2. In the forced labour camp to which they are sent, Krystyna's family members one by one die off, until only Krystyna remains. The intensity of this first section of the book is fairly consistent, and is at times hard to read about what such a large number of people went through, along with wondering how people can treat their fellow humans in such ways. The second part of the story, by comparison, is far more palatable. Krystyna is selected as one of a number of Polish children who are re-homed in New Zealand. In this section Krystyna still faces isolation, loneliness, and culture shock, but it is almost a relief to see that these are the 'only' issues she faces after the war ends - rat...

Published by W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd, London, 1978. This is the true story of the various criminals who combined to commit 'The Great Train Robbery' of 1963. We meet the main players and follow their lives as they enter the criminal world, learn why they turned to crime, and what eventually led to their decision to rob a night mail train. The life of crime is not glamourised - we learn very early on that most of their robberies don't pay off - and yet the criminals are seen in a slightly heroic manner. When everything begins to unravel following the robbery, the author points out how few things actually gave them away, and it is interesting to wonder how things could have gone differently and more successfully if the robbers had been slightly more 'fortunate'. There are elements of this story that I find fascinating to read in a non-fiction book, elements such as fake identities, secret plastic surgeries, and corrupt cops. This gives the work an odd 'a...

Published by Vintage/Penguin Random House New Zealand: NZ, 2019 (2008). This novel is primarily known as the book that inspired Taika Waititi's Oscar winning film Jojo Rabbit. It is also fairly well known that the book is quite different from the movie, particularly in tone. Waititi's films generally have a light-hearted quirky humour to them, even when dealing with weighty themes, and the adaptation Jojo Rabbit also makes the choice of including "imaginary Hitler" as a major character, something that does not happen in the book. The closest we get to anything like that is when the main character, Johannes Betzler, is wrestling with his 'non-Nazi' thoughts, and narrates: "If it's true I'd tried to get the young woman off my mind, by that time I was also trying to get Adolf Hitler off it. His constant reproach about my shortcomings irked me: my incapability, indecorum, infidelity, all starting with in and ejecting me out of his good opinion. Wh...

Published by Armada Classics, 1989. This is the true story of an escape from the "escape-resistant" Stalag 2 prisoner of war camp in World War 2. Eric Williams - one of the escapees - tells the story himself, about how they hid their tunnel under a wooden vaulting horse and avoided detection by implementing a fitness routine with a large number of other prisoners. Like any good escape story it has its highs and lows, successes and failures, but knowing it was true and is being told by one of the main participants adds an extra thrill to the proceedings. Completed 22 February 2019. Previous Book ~ Next Book

With John and Elizabeth Sherrill. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd: London, 1976 (1971). Corrie ten Boom, along with her sister Betsie, were spinster sisters living with their father in Holland during the Second World War. Despite their age and station in life all three became involved in hiding Jews, even having a false wall put in to one of their rooms so that a 'hiding place' could be installed. The Hiding Place is their story, told by Corrie herself.  When people picture heroes of the resistance, or even heroes of the faith, it is unlikely that two sisters in their fifties, and their father, would come to mind, but the faith of Betsie, Corrie and their father during the horrific events unfolding around them is humbling, and challenging. The story itself is a powerful one, but various lessons of faith are also shared throughout the book. As an example, Corrie (as a younger girl) is faced with the death of a child her mother visits. She is traumatised by this,...

Published by Fourth Estate: London, 2014 (2010). This is such an incredible book, and such an incredible story as well.  Unbroken tells the true story of Louis Zamperini, an Italian-American growing up in the early 20th century. Louie starts off on "the wrong side of the tracks", but goes on to become an Olympic athlete, running in the Berlin Olympics and meeting Hitler as a result. When the USA joins the war, Louie becomes a bombardier, in charge of releasing bombs from his plane at the right moment. Eventually his bomber crashes and Louie (along with two others) is left in a small life-raft, adrift at sea for 46 days before getting rescued (and subsequently imprisoned) by the Japanese. I can skim over this partial synopsis in a single paragraph, but to actually read the book is to get far more into the reality of living through these events. Angelina Jolie - who was neighbours with Louie in his old age - directed the movie based on this book and although it is...

Published by Henry Holt and Company, Publishers: New York, 2017.  Translated from Spanish by Lilit  Žekulun Thwaites. This may be a Young Adult book, but it is very intense for anyone. I guess I should have expected this, considering the title includes the word "Auschwitz", but there are some very 'heavy' passages within this book. Be warned. Although the main story, of teenager Dita Kraus (the titular librarian) is gripping enough, author Antonio Iturbe fills the books with a number of subplots which all carry interest as well. Thus we get the story of two prisoners falling in love, of a guard becoming obsessed with another prisoner, of the secret life of Fredy Hirsch, and more. In each of these stories, the author flits from one perspective to another - often in a single scene - allowing us to understand each character even as the characters don't manage to do the same for one another. This really does help the reader get invested into the lives of ea...