![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book by an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated author. Escape From the Pit: A Woman's Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Poland, 1939-1943, by Renia Kukielka I first learned about Renia Kukielka when reading The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos. She was just 15 when the Nazis invaded Poland, and she gives an up-close account of the net rapidly tightening around Jews there: being forced into smaller and smaller spaces, forced labor, "deportations," the gleeful violence of Nazis and complicity of many Polish gentiles. Bribery became a way of life for basic necessities. Soon Renia was living underground, in attics, basements, and makeshift bunkers. She began working with a resistance group that was about a third women. She could pass for a gentile, and she worked as a courier, smuggling messages, money, forged documents, and occasionally weapons. At one point she was caught with false papers and tortured, but was rescued by her sister and another woman resister. The most terrifying part of the book was not the Nazi prison, but the way so many of her fellow Poles cooperated with Nazi attacks on Jews, whether in hopes of looting their belongings, or just out of anti-Semitism. Other Polish resistance groups refused to work with Jewish resisters. And there were the hated "Jewish Councils" who rounded up other Jews for deportation, in the vain hope of saving themselves. So much of survival was luck. Renia escaped the country and lived to be 90. Her sister, scheduled to leave with the next group, was caught and killed. Escape From the Pit, Renia's memoir, was published in 1944, when the world was first facing the horrors of the Holocaust. In yet another twist of fate, the book was the reason that her two surviving brothers (out of 7 siblings) found out she was still alive, and were able to reunite with her.
0 Comments
![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book from an animal's point of view. The Dog Who Knew Too Much, by Spencer Quinn. This is from a murder mystery series narrated by the detective's dog, Chet. Chet's human, Bernie, gets hired for a simple job: accompany the client, Anya, to parents' day at her son's camp, to help fend off her abusive ex's attempts at getting back together. But soon Anya's son is missing, there have been two murders, Bernie's being framed, and Chet is stolen by a rival detective. Chet's point of view is focused on things that matter to him, like food and playing in the water. He'll quote what the humans say without necessarily understanding it. He's generally literal-minded: when another character says Chet is "on the ball," Chet is annoyed that he doesn't produce a ball. This is one of the later books in the series. I assume somewhere in the earlier books Chet must have mentioned what breed of dog he is, and where they live, but all I got were vague clues about that. Chet was too busy sniffing out the clues to the mystery, protecting his beloved Bernie, and trying to behave professionally (if he could just control his tail). ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book set in the future. Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah This is a dark satire, sort of a cross between The Hunger Games and the prison series Oz. It's the near future, and the popular entertainment craze is prisoners fighting in gladiator matches to the death. The fighters are "volunteers," with the promise of freedom dangled in front of them if they can survive 3 years. We see a lot of characters' points of view, including spectators, family members, and smarmy businessmen who plot to profit off the deaths. But mostly we see through the eyes of the prisoners, particularly a pair of lovers, Loretta Thurman and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker. We're warned early on that the producers think it would be an awesome spectacle to make them fight each other. There are so many surreal satirical touches: the WWE-style nicknames. The corporate sponsorships. The reality shows portraying the prisoners between death matches. And the euphemisms! Being killed in the ring is being "low freed." The guards' torture device is called "the Influencer." Killing for entertainment is a "hard action sport." The author is a prison abolitionist, who sprinkles facts and figures about the US prison system throughout the book. ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about a 24-year-old. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. This is a nonfiction book about Chris McCandless, who went by "Alex Supertramp." He was a well-educated, well-off, personable young man who decided he wanted to "live off the land." He gave his savings of $25,000 to charity, and spent 2 years hitchhiking around the country, sometimes camping, sometimes doing farm work. He seems to have made a lot of friends along the way. Inspired by Jack London and Henry David Thoreau, his dream was to travel solo through Alaska. (Thoreau tends not to mention that he had his mother doing his cooking and laundry.) He wasn't well-prepared with either equipment or knowledge, and though he survived several weeks by foraging, he eventually became ill and starved to death. Krakauer clearly feels some kinship, both in his troubled relationship with his father, and his seeking out risks. Krakauer's passion is mountain climbing, and he describes hi sown solo climb in Alaska that could easily have turned tragic. He tells the stories of other wilderness adventurers as well. While some of the press coverage about "Alex Supertramp" speculated that he had a death wish, Krakauer doesn't share that view. Instead he sees the naive arrogance of youth, imagining that mortality only applies to other people. ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book where someone dies in the first chapter. Bad Men, by Julie Mae Cohen. This is a dark comedy about a female serial killer who targets rapists and other evil men, starting with her own stepfather when she's twelve. Trigger warnings for violence, sexual abuse including children, and cruelty to animals. The story alternates between Saffy, the serial killer, and Jonathan, a true-crime podcaster whose life is falling apart: he missed a serial killer right under his nose, he got stabbed, and now his wife's left him. The Saffy POV chapters are in first person, and the Jon ones are third person, and I'm not sure why, so that was a little distracting. Saffy is obsessed with Jon, to the point of some really bizarre stalking. As a result, after Saffy kills her stepfather, it's another hundred pages before we get to see her in action against another "bad man." Things kick into high gear late in the book - and there's another killer on the loose. ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A horror book by a BIPOC author. The Trees, by Percival Everett. As horror books go, this one is less frightening than hopeful, because the "victims" are all nasty racists, directly or indirectly connected with lynchings. The first bodies found are sons and grandsons of the killers of Emmett Till, and a body resembling Till's is found at the scene - then disappears. Soon there are more murders, all following the same pattern. Two Black detectives arrive from the Mississippi version of the FBI, later joined by a female FBI agent with the unfortunate name of Herbie Hind (say it out loud). They, and the local sheriff, grow increasingly bewildered as the bodies pile up. At one point it looks like there's a rational explanation for the killings - but then all hell breaks loose. There's dark humor throughout the book. The racist local cops are all such dimwits, they make Roscoe from The Dukes of Hazzard look like a genius. I'm curious about the choice of title. I'd have gone with "Rise," or "Say Their Names," both themes throughout the book. ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with the word "leap" in the title. Sappho's Leap, by Erica Jong. This book mixes historical novel, mythology, and poetry. It starts with the legendary poet at age 50, contemplating jumping off a cliff (but not, she assures us, for the reasons we'd think). We then go back to the beginning of her life, and at first it reads like a straightforward history. But once she sets sail away from Lesbos, it becomes a reimagined Odyssey, with amazons, centaurs, sirens, enchanted islands, and even a visit to the Land of the Dead. I lost count of the shipwrecks. Given that Sappho's love poems to women are what gave us the word lesbian, I was surprised that she spent much of the story pining for a man. She's convinced that Alcaeus is the great love of her life, despite years apart and innumerable hookups with both men and women. Early in the book, Sappho complains to her mother about being forced into a marriage without her consent. Her mother responds that being raped (she actually uses that word) is women's lot in life. Yet the issue of consent is glossed over in Sappho's relationship with her female slave, and later with her own teenage music students. It was jarring precisely because the issue of consent had been discussed earlier. Also, trigger warning for an utterly horrifying scene of infant sacrifice. I'm not entirely sure why it's in the book. Throughout the book, Sappho's guide and inspiration is the Goddess Aphrodite, the source of Sappho's songs. Fragments of Sappho's poetry (Jong's translations) are interspersed throughout the book, and Jong includes her own series of Sappho/Aphrodite poems at the end. "Just one more tumble into ecstasy," you tease. "Who knows what hymns to my glory you will write now, at the peak of your powers? What are the lives of poets but offerings to the goddess they adore? Do you think such worship is a choice? Even immortals obey her capricious laws." ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A novel by a transgender or nonbinary author. The Pairing, by Casey McQuiston. Nonbinary author Casey McQuiston is a favorite of mine, and this has all the hallmarks of a McQuiston book: a delightfully improbable premise, bisexuality (both main characters, and quite a few others), and friends made along the way. This book is possibly hornier, and boozier, than Red, White, and Royal Blue. Kit (he/him) is a pastry chef, transplanted from France to Los Angeles as a child. Theo (she/they) is a bartender and aspiring sommelier (wine steward) from a Hollywood family. They grow up together, fall in love, and plan a 3-week food-and-wine tour of Europe. They break up on the plane and don't speak for four years. With the raincheck about to expire, each separately decides to take the tour - only to find they're now spending 3 weeks together. They revive the friendship, and Theo suggests a competition for who can have the most hookups. Of course, they're yearning for each other the whole time. The first half of the book is Theo's point of view, the second half is Kit's. We see how well they know each other - and how they don't. There's been much discussion of romance tropes on social media lately, and this book has some examples of how to do them right. For instance, breaking up over a miscommunication often rings false. In this case, the breakup had a solid reason, but a very plausible miscommunication kept them from reaching out to repair their relationship. Second-chance romance works best when both parties change and grow during the time apart; their old selves weren't ready for commitment, but now they are. The friends-to-lovers trope is also used really well: when Theo comes out as nonbinary, Kit realizes he's always intuited this, and slides effortlessly into using they/them pronouns for Theo. And there are two uses of the "only one bed" trope, which always seems improbable, but it's so much fun. The book is loaded with sensory detail: the artwork they see, and the food and drinks they enjoy, as they travel though France, Spain, and Italy. Amazing meals, mouth-watering pastries, and so much wine that it's hard to believe they can have so much sex - but they do, and the sensory detail doesn't stop at the bedroom door. ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with a one-word title that you had to look up in the dictionary. Drapetomania, by John R. Gordon. The title is a word coined during the slavery era, to explain why some enslaved people ran away: escape was blamed on "madness." Naturally the supposed cure was "firm discipline." This book gets trigger warnings for pretty much any form of physical or sexual cruelty. And yet, at its heart, it's a love story, two men seizing every scrap of joy they can find in a life of struggle. Cyrus is a field hand, and Abednego ("Bed") is a butler. They find love and comfort in the moments they can steal together. Then disaster strikes, the crop is lost, and the plantation owner sells Abednego to pay off debts. Cyrus first plans to flee North, then realizes he has to find Abednego first. Far down the river, Abednego is picking cotton for gleefully sadistic enslavers, but he holds fast to the faith that Cyrus will find him. The author has a good feel for the era. Cyrus has lived his whole life confined to one estate, and has never been in the "big house" - the wider world is a mystery to him. The rivalry and suspicion between the field hands and house servants is a constant - and used by the enslavers as a way to divide and conquer. The characters have some narrow escapes, and get help from people with strong reasons to turn them in instead. The victories feel earned, even when they're improbable. It's a story of hope as the North Star, guiding them toward love and freedom. ![]() Popsugar Reading Challenge Category: A book from 3 or more points of view. There There, by Tommy Orange. This novel has a large case of characters, most of them Indigenous, heading to a powwow in Oakland for a variety of reasons. Aspiring filmmaker Dene wants to collect stories. 13-year-old Orvil wants to dance. 10-days-sober Jacqui wants to reconnect with her family. And Octavio plans to rob them of the prize money. We get first, third, and occasionally second-person narration - sometimes more than one of those for the same character. And there's an occasional "interlude" where an omniscient narrator describes some of the grimmest incidents in the centuries of violence toward Indigenous people. I don't mind improbable plot twists in fiction, but improbable character behavior makes it harder to suspend disbelief. Jacqui goes to a 12-step meeting and encounters the guy who raped and impregnated her decades earlier. He's remorseful, and I'll believe her forgiving him. But agreeing to a road trip with him to the powwow? No. Most of the characters have dealt with violence, addiction, and poverty. We're given plenty of foreshadowing that the Chekhov's Gun Rule is going to apply here. Still, when the violence hits, it's wrenching, and there's more than one heartbreak as we learn who lives, who dies, and who's left wondering. |