The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, by Willy Lindwer

This book was on my tbr for over a decade… I know! I bought it when I was around 12 years old and went on a school trip to the Netherlands and visited Anne Franks House, I’ve always been a bookworm so of course, I picked it up. However, I felt intimidated and honestly kind of scared by this intense topic. We had read Anne Frank’s diary in class, but reading this by myself felt like a task I couldn’t do just yet. So I left it, at the back of my bookshelves, for a decade. Then we come to me being more active within the online book community, the Bookternet as I hear Jessiethereader call it on YouTube (I love that phrase so much!), and I was actively going through and checking out all of the books I had on my tbr shelves (to be read). I found this one again, and now, age 21, I felt like I could tackle this concept so I picked it up. Now, this isn’t to say that you have to be a certain age to read this book, this was just my own personal experience (and the blurb made it look kinda scary, truth be told).

So, onto the book. As the front cover says, we follow the stories of 6 women who interacted with Anne in her last few months alive. What I didn’t realise from the outside of the book alone is that this is the work compiled for a documentary and that there was so much more gathered about the individual women in the research progress of this. They couldn’t use it at the time as the documentary focused on Anne alone, but Willy Lindwer couldn’t just let these stories sit untold when these women had something to say. And that is how this book came into being.

These stories range from deep and emotional, to factual and informative, with all the women having a variety of experiences within the different concentration camps used by the Nazis. These women all survived the Holocaust, and they tell the stories of both themselves and those who could not make it through. It is a very touching read and definitely made me appreciative of everything I have in my life, as well as worried about the current state of politics and racism. We cannot have a repeat of these events, and maybe, just maybe, more people being educated about what happened when the Nazi’s decided that their way was the only way can help to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.

BookTubeAThon 2018 TBR!

I originally did this TBR as a video (if you couldn’t tell by the thumbnail-esque picture) so if you’d like to watch that then click here!

This will be my first foray into BookTubeAThon, which is spanning the 30th July till the 5th August this year, and I am really excited to take part in as many of the YouTube and Instagram challenges as possible! It’ll be a bit of a test for me as my editing skills are still in development but I’m looking forward to the challenge!

There are 7 reading challenges every year, so I’ll go through each challenge and explain my book choices.

1. Coin toss – this challenge is for my book to be decided by the flip of a coin (which I am horrendous at!). I decided it would be picking between 2 geography books that I own, one from the modern day and one a textbook from the late 1940s. I’d love to read both of them, especially now that I’ve finished my geography degree, so either one is fine by me! I ended up flipping and getting the modern day book so that is the first book on my tbr.
2. A book about something you want to do – so for me the book for challenge one is doubling up for this challenge. I really would love to have a job within the field of geography and so this fits in perfectly for me!
3. Book & Adaptation – challenge 3 is to read a book and then also watch its adaptation within the BookTubeAThon. I decided on Anne of Green Gables, which I have never read before and have been meaning to get around to for a while. I’ve also never seen an adaptation for it so I’m looking forward to this story.
4. Green – the fourth challenge is to read a book with green on the cover. The first two books I have already chosen also fit into this category as my copies both have green covers. However, I decided to pick some other books to also fit within this. I chose two books for this challenge, book #1 is Runaway by Meg Cabot (3rd book in the Airhead trilogy) and book #2 is Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett (6th book in the Discworld). I have been really enjoying reading both of these series and felt that their covers being green was a sign that I should read them soon!
5. A hat? – This challenge is to wear a hat the whole time while reading a book. Not going to lie I’m not keen on this challenge, I dislike hats for multiple reasons (I also get migraines and just… no thank you) so for me I am going to wear a hat reading Runaway as I always blitz through Meg Cabot’s books and I won’t have to have it on for long! It also means I won’t have to wear the hat outside, which is good as the only one I can find is a woolly hat and it’s July (and I live in the northern hemisphere) so I’d look like a crazy woman!
6. Beautiful spine – challenge #6 is to read a book which has a very pretty spine, specifically the spine rather than the cover as a whole. I picked a book called Unrivalled by Alyson Noël, which I picked up for no reason other than its spine! What else could fit this challenge so perfectly?
7. 7 books – the very last challenge is to simply read seven books over the course of the readathon. As I only have 5 books so far on my tbr I have just chosen random books which I would really like to get to for the last two. Book 6 is The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer, which I have owned for almost a decade now! I bought this on a school trip to the Netherlands in year 8 (12 to 13-year-olds) when we visited the Anne Frank Museum, and I was 13 at the time. I didn’t read it then as truth be told, I was kind of scared of the topic. It was stories about a dead girl which I knew were going to make me upset. I don’t think I was quite mature enough to read this book at that stage. Now I’m nearing the end of 21 years and I feel like I can pick up this book and really get out of it what the author intended. This will have a very different feel to all the other books on my tbr, however, I am happy to finally be getting around to this book. Book 7 is Alice by Christina Henry, the first book in a duology (I think) with the second book being Red Queen. My friend bought me these two books a couple of years ago for Christmas, and I was unable to get around to them as I had so many other books on my tbr! This seems to be a dystopian retelling of Alice in Wonderland and I am excited to dive into this darker version of the world.

That is my whole tbr explained and disected, so for ease of reference I’ll list all the books below:

• I Used To Know That Geography – Will Williams (Coin toss and something I want to do)
• Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery (Read a book and watch its adaptation)
• Runaway – Meg Cabot (Read a green book)
• Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett (Read a green book)
• Unrivalled – Alyson Noël (A beautiful spine)
• The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank – Willy Lindwer (Additional)
• Alice – Christina Henry (Additional)

Please let me know if you’re going to be doing the ReadAThon too, I’d love to interact and see how you guys interpret the challenges! I’ll be posting updates and responses to the challenges on my YouTube channel and my Innstagram (and lets be real probably Twitter too) so if you’d like to keep up with my progress then you can find me there! Links below (they’ll open in a new tab).

Click here for my Instagram – @autumnofpellinor

Click here for my YouTube – Autumn of Pellinor

Click here for my Twitter – @autumnpellinor

 

The Girl in the Blue Coat – a review

Yet another WWII book, nobody who follows me is surprised. But let’s be real I’m not going to stop, so let’s get into my review.

I listened to this book, as an audiobook, thanks to my libraries online app. Although this let me read the book when I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to due to time constraints, I feel like it also distanced me from the characters and what happens to them. This could be Monica Hesse’s writing style, but it seems to happen more frequently to me with audiobooks so I’ll have to read a physical copy of this book in order to find out. This distancing meant that I wasn’t massively impacted by the events as they happen to the characters, however, this doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the book. I gave it 4/5*s! I just didn’t cry at any of the plot twists, which is why it didn’t hit the 5* mark.

We follow Hanneke as she is working within the black market during WWII in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We see her making deliveries during the day, hiding what she does from her parents at night, and morning her boyfriend Bass in every moment as he was killed on the Dutch front lines. During a standard delivery, one of the women wants help from Hanneke, it turns out that she wants her to try and find a Jewish teenager that she was hiding in a secret room. She has vanished and the woman is incredibly concerned for her safety. Eventually Hanneke is convinced into helping find her, and the web of the Dutch resistance closes in around her and opens her eyes to the horrors of the Nazis.

I really enjoyed watching the various characters develop, come to trust each other and work to help those worse off than them. This is also, unless I am remembering incorrectly, the first WWII book I have read which was set in the Netherlands and followed Dutch characters. It was very interesting to me to see how this country was impacted by the Nazis regime and how the Dutch people resisted in little and large ways.

This is a beautifully written book and personally I think it is a very important topic. Books set in WWII, in all different areas, all have something that can be taken away from them and applied to the modern day. This book tells us that we should help those who are being treated inhumanely, and to use our privilege to help as many people as we can. Don’t let horrendous acts happen under your nose in your own country, and not take action against them. Even if no one else knows that you’re doing it.

I definitely recommend this book and I aim to try out anything else Monica Hesse releases.

Tattooist of Auschwitz will break your heart

This book was absolutely amazing and left me in tears once I finished it. The narrative follows Lale, a holocaust survivor and his time in the clutches of the Nazi’s, and this book is based on a real-life story from the author’s chats with Lale Sokolov and his son. We see his arrival at Auschwitz and how he managed to get into his position through a mixture of luck and work. As he settles in as best as he can in the life he is left with, we are shown him meeting a woman who he decides he justs has to talk to, even though there is a risk of death. We see him attempt to avoid trouble, whilst helping out those around him and attempting to give the kids living in his block some semblance of a normal childhood. There are some shocking moments, ones which will make you feel grateful to be alive and free and living in relative luxury, but thankfully there are also moments where hate is overturned and we get to see some beautifully happy moments come out of atrocious conditions.

Once I finished this book I cried for a good 20 minutes, full on sobbing, because this book is so powerful. It is written beautifully and gives such an insight into the world that was created to dehumanise people, and yet still there was hope throughout that may have been suffocated at times but always managed to keep breathing. This is definitely a must read and I need to get this book in a physical format so that I can read it again. Absolutely amazing and something I will recommend to everyone I know.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for a free eCopy of this book in return for an unbiased review.