# 4 Title starting
with the letter “H”
Hangsaman
Genre: Fiction
Page number: 218
Rating: 1 star
One sentence comment: I am not convinced why this book is necessary since
lots of the plot is either not important or clear.
I adored
Jackson’s The Hunting Hill House even though I don’t read horror normally.
However, about this book, I was confused right from the beginning. When the
protagonist talked to her parents, ‘a detective’ suddenly spoke to her. The
author seemed to use Stream of consciousness in her writing. I just dislike
this type of writing. I dragged myself to page 70 then gave it up.
#5 Title starting
with the letter “I”
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944 -
1956
Author: Anne
Applebaum
Genre: Non-fiction
Page number: 470
Rating: 4 stars
First sentence: Among many other things, the year
1945 marked one of the most extraordinary population movements in European
history.
One
sentence comment: What happened in the Eastern Europe was formidable with
persecution, resistance and sacrifice.
I’m not used to reading books about communism. I bought the book from the internet in the beginning of the Ukrainian war last year when there was lots of talks about the author, and then I put it on my shelf. This book club prompt motivated me to read the book finally.
Before reading the book, I have never imagined the devastated state in Eastern Europe after the war. “During the occupation, it became normal to change one’s name and profession, to travel on false papers, to memorize a fabricate biography, to watch all of one’s money lose its value overnight, to see people rounded up in the street like cattle.” Nither have I ever imagined the Russian Red Army were such brutal soldiers. The second chapter is about the occupation in 1945. “They appeared so shocked by the material wealth of Eastern Europe…. They found ordinary peasants who owned several chickens, a couple of cows, and more thatn one change of clothes. They found small contry towns with stone churches, cobbled streets, and people riding bicycles, which were then still unkown to most of Russia….What they don’t steal, they often destroyed…. In Poland, Soviet tanks deliberately destroyed a thousand-year-old cathedral that had no military significance…. Burning to the ground the priceless book collection of the university library…. Angry soldiers of the Red Army seemed consumed by a desire of revenge…. Women of all ages were subjected to gang rape and sometimes murdered afterward.” Communist leaders from Easter Europe endured purges and policy changed then survived, but most of them stayed loyal to Stalin, which is implausible to me.
The postwar mass deportation of ethnic Germans was diabolical. They were treated inhuman, starved and beaten as a result of revenge by the Eastern European people. Some of them “moved into Polish or Jewish homes, following the muder or eviction the owners.” Therefore Churchill and Roosevelt approved of the ethnic cleansing policy. Then deportation camps transformed to prisons and communists were in charge of the distribution of German property. Stalin also forced Poles to leave towns and cities that had been Polish-speaking for centuries to colonize in German-speaking places. Ukrainians were also sent to Soviet Ukraine. “By 1950, not much remained of multiethnic Eastern Europe."
There bound to be countless traumatic cases. In postwar Poland, a Jew was found abusing German prisoners, including women and children, and was responsible for an epidemic. He was arrested for war crime, but later he was identified as a victim, who had suffered from Nazi genocide. Many Jews left their countries for America, Western Europe, and Palestine, because it was impossible “to live in the towns and villages that had become cemetries of their families.” Besides, there were still brutal attacks on Jews after the war.
The above is only the beginning of the book. Later there are more persecution towards people’s belief. Numerous political leaders and religious priests were put in prison and tortured. This book is full of stories about many different people at the time. It reads like a condensed novels with various layers.
#9 A book with a dedication
City of Lies (#1 of the counterfeit lady series)
Genre:
Historical history
Page
number: 325
Rating:
3 stars
First
sentence: Jake looked much too SMUG.
One
sentence comment: An unrealistic protagonist can not make a brilliant story.
The story begins with a suffragist
movement, in which we get the pictures of prison, starve strike and force
feeding. It carries a mission of the important history at the time, but can be
boring and pretentious, because the protagonist was too unrealistic. However,
the writer was able to keep her humorous tone all over the book so that there
was still fun in reading.
My friend’s visit
It was the first time that my friend stayed
at my flat in spite of our long-term friendship. On one of the five days, we
went to our university where we had attended classes in different classrooms more
than thirty years ago. There were many people and things we could talk about as
if they stayed the same but the university has gone through lots of physical changes.
I found my friend changed very little, still giggling like a girl. She is still
not treating life seriously. She has knowledge about many things but doesn’t
have a clue about her own matters. She cried with tears when talking about her
husband but she didn’t have a strong motivation to solve the problem of their
relationship. I wonder whether it is the same whenever one is tangled in an
unhappy marriage. She asks so little from life and simply content with the
basic need purely in terms of materialism.
Bible study
After my friend left, my church friend, Mayling,
and I started to take Bible lessons from Paster Kim. I have been inspired by
Kim’s Sunday sermon and realized that I’d paied too little attention to the
structure of Kingdom of God. By listening to Kim more often, I am amazed by his
spiritual level. He was sent to spread the Good News as a missionary in the
southeast of China, and he spent time living with Hmong people in an unsanitary
and uncivilized environment. In the end he was sent to prison by the
government. I am glad that this study has brought me closer to God, and I began
to pray for people I meet everyday. It changes the way I see things when I encounter
difficult students, because now I am concious of their need and of my positive
reaction towards them.