The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Another finished book. Long weekends without any definite plans and a lot of stuff around the house you are trying to avoid doing will give you good reading motivation. Long weekends are great.


But I really don’t have much to say about The Reader. I had seen the movie when it was in the theatres and loved it. A friend lent me the book and it has lived on my shelf for way too long. I’m going through my books and trying to make progress on what I have and what I need to return to people. At least I have one less borrowed book.

As for the book, it was beautifully written. Not a long piece and it gives an interesting perspective of the effect of the war on the German people, even to those in the next generation. Though it was a short read, every chapter felt like a piece of the puzzle that defined that man’s life in three acts to display how one person can become interwoven into the fabric of their character.

That might be a very bad description of what the book was about. I highly recommend the book and the movie. The movie was a faithful representation of the book and you could choose one over the other and not feel cheated out of the story experience.

Now, must find a happy novel to read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Posting two in one day?! I know, that is the real shocker. Basically the last book was just lurking around, waiting to be reviewed and this one, just finished this afternoon, was demanding to be reviewed. Isn’t it weird how some books can be more patient than others?


Did you know that the islands in the English Channel were occupied by Germany during WWII? I had no idea, but then, my knowledge of the war is pretty limited to what I’ve been able to gleam from Hollywood movies. As far as I know, the US had nothing to do with those islands so no HBO special by Tom Hanks will ever give us that story. Not that I’m bitter.

The story starts in London, 1946, and the city is starting to rebuild after the war. Juliet Ashton is the centre of the story, a writer in search of her next novel. She receives a letter from a stranger asking if she might know of any other books by the author Charles Lamb. This kicks off a correspondence between herself and the people of Guernsey whom she finds herself falling in love with. The story is told in the form of letters, telegrams, and in one section, a journal.

The shining thread through out all is the love of books and how reading can help you get through some really terrible times. Or how books can bring people together and help you form unexpected relationships. Even though the subject matter is a little dark and heavy at times, the sharp wit of Juliet’s letters keeps you turning the page for more. It makes you wish you had someone as entertaining to correspond with in the old fashioned world of pen and paper, stamps and envelopes. Yet another book I liked and recommend to pretty much everyone.

Just think, this book didn’t have vampires or magic or any of the many other paranormal things I usually read. And the next one I finish might not either. Sign I’m getting old? A truly scary thought.

Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones by Erica Jong

Review by Red Bonney

Oh, it’s so hard to be subtle while walking out of a bookstore with book explicitly displaying the exposed leg of a woman sporting a red silk garter. One must grit one’s teeth and dare society to look down on one for reading something that clearly possesses smutty subjects. I’m here to say, however that this book is more than your typical romance where girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love (she met many more than just one boy), overcome some piddling adversity and live happily ever after. It’s a tale of epic proportions of one woman’s adventures and struggles in the wide world, who merely wants her fair share of happiness and means to get it. It’s a book of instruction and hard learned lessons.

The story was set in the eighteenth century and penned loosely in the language of the era, which was not as difficult to read as I thought it would, written as it was by a twentieth century woman not unsympathetic to her readers. Once I got into the flow of the story, the language and archaic spelling was easier to overcome. It was handy in a way, as it set it apart from the other books I was reading at the same time.

The tale was narrated by Fanny herself, (based loosely on the character from Cleland’s Fanny) to her daughter whom she wishes to impart her life lessons to prevent her from falling into the same traps life sets. ‘Tis folly, I say, to try and instruct someone when only personal experience will do, but it doesn’t hurt to try, I suppose. Anyway, the heroine, Fanny, was an orphan adopted by the Lord and Lady Bellars, spending her childhood years in relative comfort and ease in the country and isolation from the outside world with her step-brother and step-sister. She grew up without want for anything, a large house, fine clothes and an education, which as the story unfolds, becomes her most valuable possession. Forced to flee her childhood home of comforts, she makes her way to London to seek her fortune. Along the way, she encounters many colourful and memorable characters who influence her future and her fortune which ebbs and flows throughout the book.

The most annoying aspect of this book is that Fanny is a modern woman set in the past. She is a modern feminist in a time when even women generally thought themselves inferior. (I’m currently reading a book about the history of Misogyny - my next book to review- and it’s going to ooze into everything I write from now on). I kept mistaking the book to be a true history of the time, except for this one modern sort of woman. Oh, she had her moments where I just thought ‘what the hell are you thinking?’, but for the most part, I thought she was a very brave, daring girl and I wish I were more like her. Not the part where she was a prostitute for a year, but the rest wasn’t too bad.

This book surprised me, not that I was expecting it to be a crappy book or anything. It was easy to get sucked in just by reading the chapter titles, which were long and descriptive of the chapters they preceded. I hated to put it down because when I saw it sitting there on the table, it looked daunting and heavy, but I couldn’t just stop at the end of the page, I had to keep reading it and it’s one I’ll definitely read again in the future.