What the Kentishbookboy read 2020

 

Book Bingo 2020

I stand in awe of my nephew, with everything that 2020 has thrown at him he's just one square away from completing his bingo chart from the start of the year!

I'm not 100% sure I can say the same about my sheet and Nanny has already said that she's totally lost her reading mojo this year. 

Although he had ticked off some of the squares at the start of the challenge the definitive list of what books he'd like to count for each square are:

Kentishbookboy's choice: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Non-fiction: Sharks and other deadly ocean creatures

Set in another country: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Norfolkbookworm's choice: The Highland Falcon Thief

Set pre 1950 - Carrie's War

A book from the School list - Varjak Paw

A book with magic in: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

A graphic novel: The 13 Storey Treehouse series

A book recommended by a friend: The Train to Impossible Places

A funny book: 117-Storey Treehouse

A book from the school list - The Lion and the Unicorn

A book with animals in - The Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue

A book recommended by Nanny or Grandad - to be confirmed, possibly Wind in the Willows

Free choice: The Umbrella Mouse

A poetry book: A Poem a  Day

A book picked by mum or dad: Wonderscape

As well as this list of books Kentishbookboy has also shared his reading log with us, although none of us are convinced that this is 100% accurate as we suspect that there has been some rereading and sneak reading after lights out that isn't accounted for here! Well if he's anything like the Norfolkbookworm was as a child this is definitely the case!

As things stand, with just over a week of the year to go the Kentishbookboy is calling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as his top book of the year.

Following on

The Ratline by Philippe Sands

Back in 2016 I was blown away by Sands' first book East West Street I reviewed it in the middle of the year here and it remained one of my tops books of the year when I came to do my round up.

I was a little concerned about The Ratline for two reasons - 1) it is a second book and they can always be tricky & 2) it is another book about the guilt (or not) felt by survivors of the Holocaust - would it just be too much like the first book?

Happily for me neither of my fears came true and while The Ratline does almost continue from the end of the first book (and definitely from the end of the documentary Sands made) it was completely different and taught me so much about Austria during the Nazi period and also the escape routes used by the Nazis as they tried to flee justice.

Thanks to a lot of the children's literature I've read regarding the Holocaust I was aware of how some of the history played out in Austria before, during and after the Anschluss but this has always been from the Jewish/resistance point of view and so to read about it from the other aide was equally fascinating and horrifying.

While I was aware that some high profile Nazis escaped Europe for a new life in South America I had never given any thoughts to how this happened and so read this part of the tale completely fresh. I knew that there had been complicity in some quarters - but just how much was eye opening.

At the heart of this book is Sands' relationship with the son of  SS Brigadesfuhrer Otto von Wachter as he tries to convince Sands (and the world) that his father wasn't a war criminal responsible for deaths of thousands of people.

Sands manages to tell the tale fairly and with an open mind but at the end you feel you know the truth and Sands' own feelings as well as if he'd been marching up and down in front of you with a banner.

This book has been published at the height of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and so many of the events and publicity you'd have expected to see just haven't happened, although there are some good  online interviews and reviews to hunt out. I hope that this book isn't lost in the chaos and that it wins as many accolades as East West Street. I also hope that when the paperback is released the pandemic is receding and there are some events I can get to!

A winning read

The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es

As soon as I saw this book on the Costa Longlist I knew that I'd want to read it and finally it has been my turn to borrow it from the library.

It was worth the wait and despite beating one of my favourite reads from last year (The Skylark's War) in the Costa prize now I have read it I can't be too sad at this turn of events.

I've written before about my interest in books about the Holocaust, in fact my dissertation for my first MA was about how such an event is portrayed in children's literature. This new addition to the canon - all about how one Jewish girl was saved by various Dutch families was right up my street.

The mix of family history (it was the author's family who played a part in saving Lien), modern history and thought, detailed scholarly research and Lien's own autobiography made this book a compelling read. It was also shocking and not just because of the horror of the extermination camps.

I had the idea, mostly gained through literature admittedly, that Holland had a good reputation when it came to their actions during WW2. So many Jews fled there from Germany during the 1930s that to me it seemed like a good place for people to have fled to.
We then have the stories of the heroic people who hid Jews and worked for the Resistance. The praise heaped on those hiding the Frank family and the other similar tales lead to me to believe that while the Dutch weren't quite as helpful as the Danish in saving their Jewish population they were definitely 'good guys.'

Van Es dispels this early on:

"The Jewish wartime death rate in the Netherlands, at 80%, was more than double that of any other Western country, far higher than in France, Belgium, Italy or even Germany and Austria themselves."  p.58

Van Es, like me, was shocked to discover this, and even more so when he found out that along with various geographic and military reasons "it was the native administration that brought death to the Jews" (p. 58).

The poor behaviour of (some) Dutch people continued through the war, and is an integral part of Lien's story, as well as afterwards when survivors returned home or people emerged from hiding.

I know that history is rewritten by the victors but this new knowledge adds to the unease I felt on visiting the Anne Frank House last year. It is so easy to promote the bits of your history that you want people to concentrate on by passing over the negative aspects quickly. The suffering that all of Holland experienced in the winter of 1944/45 and then in rebuilding the country as a liberal land has airbrushed a lot of the darkness.

It is early in the year to be picking 'best books' but I have a feeling that this one will stay with me for a long time, and in many ways is a companion read to one of my top reads from a few years ago - East West Street by Philippe Sands.

A space sensation

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth - Chris Hadfield

I think that regular readers of my thoughts will realise that I have three main interests - reading, the theatre and manned space flight.  When two of these combine it is a real treat.

Commander Chris Hadfield was the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station during his nearly 6 months in space earlier in 2013. In that time his use of social media to share his experiences made him probably the best known astronaut since Neil Armstrong.

Just 6 months after his return to Earth, after spending the preceding 5 months in space, Hadfield has published his autobiography. I am guessing that perhaps he'd been working on it prior to flight as nothing about it feels rushed or incomplete, it is just a delight to read from cover to cover.

I've read a lot of astronaut (and cosmonaut) memoirs and this is easily in my top three.  Hadfield decided he wanted to be an astronaut in July 1969 as he watched Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon and set out in a very single minded fashion to make his dream come true.

However he is Canadian and despite this determination he seems unable to be nasty as he achieves his dream.he always comes across as a very nice person, Throughout the book recognises that he must have talent and ability but he remains humble and charts his mistakes clearly and gives tips for how he thinks a person should behave to get ahead and remain well liked.

The book doesn't contain too many technological details but I did learn a lot more about the other aspects of training, I also know more about going to the loo in space than I did before.  Hadfield drops tiny tidbits of gossip but never names names which just makes me want to read more, he is also far more open about his health problems before, during and after flight than I've ever known an astronaut be before.

If you only got interested in the space programme thanks to following @Cmdr_Hadfield you won't be disappointed in the book, and if like me you have a deeper interest I don't think you'll regret reading this book for moment.

Now if you'll excuse me I am off to haunt the website to see if I can meet Commander Hadfield when he is in the UK next month but I do urge you to watch his version of Space Oddity - the book tells you just how the video was made!