Amity Shlaes

Audiobook (Narrated by Terence Aselford)

The Forgotten Man  is a book that is packed with information. It recounts The Great Depression from several different viewpoints. There are snippets of thought(complete with quotes)of the major players including Roosevelt and Hoover but we also learn of lesser known characters such as Rex Tugwell, Andrew Mellon and Raymond Moley.

Since I am primarily a visual learner, I struggled quite a bit with the volume of information contained in this audiobook. It would have been much easier for me to absorb the information if I had been reading a physical copy. However, non-fiction is one genre that I find well-suited to audio so that’s why I chose this one. I found The Forgotten Man fascinating and there were several times that I wanted to make notes about the parallels to the things that I see happening today. However, because I was busy doing other things as I was listening, that didn’t happen. 

The overall theme I came away with this book was that though it may have been well-intentioned, the experimentation done by Roosevelt and other people during this time in history actually prolonged The Depression. We see some of the same things being repeated today as far as huge spending versus scaling back and reducing the deficit. 

In all honesty, though I found this a fascinating book as I was listening, I didn’t retain a lot of it. I would like to revisit the print version because there is a wealth of information there. In light of current events, I highly recommend reading this one. Just take notes. (4/5)

Audiobook (Read by Michael Maloney)

Library Book

I knew only the basic premise of this book when I chose it for several challenges. I knew that it fit into the WWII category, that it is categorized as YA,  and that it was Jewish Literature about the Holocaust.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is the story of Bruno, a nine-year-old boy, who comes home one day to find that his family is moving due to his father’s job. Bruno is the son of a German officer who will be the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. From his bedroom window he has seen people in “striped pajamas” behind a fence. Curious about why they are there as well as lonely, Bruno sets out exploring.  He goes to the fence and he happens to meet a boy named Shmuel who is very similar to Bruno in many ways. They even share the same birthday. However, their lives are obviously very different.

As I was listening to this book, I kept thinking that I was really enjoying the fact that I was hearing this from the perspective of a German child. I have read about concentration camps from the perspective of a Jewish child. The horrors are unimaginable. But to gain some insight as to how it is possible that people stood by and allowed this to happen is definitely different.

Bruno is pretty naive. He is just a little boy who counts on his parents to take care of him. He figures they know best and doesn’t worry too much about the rest. In fact, I thought that Bruno’s cluelessness was a bit unrealistic until I listened to the author’s interview at the end of the book. He spoke about the fact that The Holocaust is hindsight for us. We look back with the perspective that we know this happened. It is part of the landscape of our past. However, during the time that this was going on and when the concentration camps were liberated, even adults believed that the stories of the atrocities were just rumors and that something this monstrous could not be happening. He also talks about complacency and the fact that victims of the concentration camps were marched through neighboring villages and people did nothing. That is something that I hadn’t considered and changed my opinion. I do think that Bruno was immature for a nine-year-old by today’s standards. I did have a hard time believing that he couldn’t catch on to the names of Auschwitz(Out With) and the Fuhrer(The Fury). However, I concede that it’s possible that without some of the outside influences we have today in the picture, nine-year-olds were much more innocent sixty or so years ago.

At any rate, those things were minor for me as was the fact that I figured out what was going to happen pretty early on it the book. There were no shocks and though the convergence of the events seems improbable, stranger things happen every day and ultimately, I was willing to suspend disbelief for the message that was conveyed.

I am not sure if the author interview is available in the regular book. However, listening to John Boyne explain why he did what he did with his characters made a huge difference to me. The book and the writing are excellent. The thought process behind them make this book superior.

This is a must-read for anyone who is breathing so that we don’t become complacent again. (5/5)

Audiobook(Read by Lillian Rabe)
Aryn Kyle

Alice Winston is a 12 year-old-girl who is growing up on a Colorado horse farm. Her mother suffers from apparent depression rarely leaving her bedroom. Her sister Nona, the pride of the family and the showing circuit, gets married and runs away leaving Alice alone to help her father run the barn. They are always short of money and her father is always trying to find a way to make ends meet even though it means doing things that they’d really rather not such as boarding horses for rich people.

Alice is walking the painful line where she isn’t quite a child nor is she an adult. She is forced to deal with several difficult things for a 12 year-old: the death of a classmate, her mother’s emotional problems, her sister’s abandonment, and feeling that she will never please her father. Plus, she is dealing with all of the normal 12 year-old things like her first kiss, her first heart-breaking crush, and finding her niche among her peers.

This book didn’t turn out to be anything like I thought it would be. I am not a particular fan of either westerns or horse stories. However, this is a beautiful story of a young girl dealing with the ordinary difficulties of coming of age as well as the individual difficulties unique to her life.  I spent a lot of time alternating between wanting to shake the snot out of Alice’s father and feeling really sorry for him for the way his life worked out. I also had the same reaction to her sister Nona. Alice just seemed to be a tumbling along in their wake. She does eventually find her footing though not before suffering a few painful missteps.  In the end, I was left admiring them all because even though they made bad choices at times, they made the best that they could from the circumstances of their lives.

I read this as part of my personal goal to read all of the Alex Award winners. I found it touching and well worth reading.  (4/5)