the book bum

     This is the kind of book you have to read as neutrally as possible.  It is told like the memoir (I really want to know if it's a thinly disguised memoir; I've done some digging and Schlink's life bears some similarities to that of his protagonist) of a fictional German man, Michael Berg, who grows up during World War II and who, at the age of 15, has an affair with a thirty-year-old woman named Hanna. Hanna is manipulative, tender, distant, playful, and guarded.  One day she disappears, and years later, when Michael is a law student, he discovers that she is on trial for hideous crimes.      There is so much guilt in The Reader  - Michael's guilt over his small betrayals of Hanna, the guilt of Germans who tolerated the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors' guilt for having survived when others did not, etc.  Most central and mysterious of all is Hanna's guilt - does she repent?  Should she repent? Can she ever be absolved? ...

     Shout-out to my friend Isabelle for lending me this book!  We have started an informal book club, meaning the two of us lend each other our favorite books and discuss them at lunch.  Anyway, I probably would not have read past this book's detailed and dull beginning   if she had not recommended it so strongly.  And I am so glad that I did!      Yes, the beginning is dull - a description of a murder trial, which I had no emotional connection to at first - but after that things pick up nicely.  We learn that the trial takes place on an American fishing island not long after World War II, and that a Japanese man has been accused of murdering a man of German descent.  Both are American veterans, but the islanders don't see it that way because of the accused man's race.  This would be a fascinating story in itself, but Guterson weaves a billion other story threads around the central cord of the trial.  These thr...

     I was going to title this post "Best War Books" or something like that, but then I realized it would be really, really arrogant to assume that my little slapped-together list actually contained the very best books on a subject that has been so well covered by so many authors.  So I only hope to share a few of my favorite books about war with you; I can't promise they are the best.        War is terrible, but it sure inspires some wonderful books. 1. Dispatches by Michael Herr - I've never read a book like this before - it's very stream-of-consciousness and studded with historical and musical allusions (I actually made a playlist out of all the songs and artists that Herr mentions).  It's a mash-up of poetry, journalism (Herr was reporting on the Vietnam War), and novel that captures the chaos of war in a way that no standard narrative could. 2. Exodus by Leon Uris - Reading Exodus , which in simplest terms explores the history...