I know that Forster was painting a picture of the racial tension between the English and Indians—a picture, I might point out, that didn’t turn every Englishman into a villain and every Indian into a martyr (both races had their good and bad points)—but it just wasn’t a picture that really captured my imagination.
Tag: Read the World
Number the Stars | WWII
I could say something here about the beauty of Lois Lowry’s prose, the poetry in her writing, the depth in her characters. All good reasons to enjoy a book. But I’ll just go with this: it’s true and important.
India: A History | India
From about 1000 B.C. t0 1700 A.D., India history is a disjointed creature containing unpronounceable names and a multitude of different kingdoms and dynasties.
Midnight’s Children | India
Because the truth is, Indian life and culture is amazingly complicated. It’s a menagerie of different castes, religions, politics, boundaries, and cultures. It’s like a giant Gordian knot of humanity that you’re trying to unravel, only finally coming to the understanding that it’s impossible to fully understand and organize it.
Heaven Is Here | Book Club
Stephanie’s thoughts about love and happiness, discoveries that not many people make, are deep and abiding. Only those who are steeped in the furnace of affliction—truly immersed for months and even years of in that fire of suffering—can easily see those truths that others struggle to understand: you can choose happiness; it doesn’t choose you.
To Kill a Mockingbird | Book Review
This book touched me on a number of levels, but mostly it taught me to have faith in humanity, to have faith in the good in people. This alone makes the book worth reading.
Read the World Wrap-Up | Germany
I knew before I started this Read the World journey that it was going to be awesome. I mean, how could exploring a country be anything but fun? I just wish I had gotten underway a little sooner, and then I could’ve added a few more books to my list. Maybe a travelogue or a children’s book (or…
Germany: A New History | Germany
Germany was so fragmented for so many centuries that, upon finding an identity, it wanted to stretch—so to speak—its fledgling wings.
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall | Germany
Read this book so that you can really begin to understand: the story of the Berlin Wall is the stories of the people who lived behind it.
Hidden Figures | WWII
This book should be read for how it inspires, for how it illustrates hard work and determination and a lack of self-pity can go so far, for how it shows people of all genders and races and nationalities can accomplish so much together.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | WWII
I knew intellectually that Hitler was something of a mad man. I mean, you can’t murder millions of people with a matter-of-fact, blasé attitude without being crazy. But after reading this book, after the peek I had into his mind, it’s my opinion that he was a completely, repentantly psychopathic monster. He was the worst type of psychotic: brilliant and psychotic. They do the most damage, and he was the tool of the deaths of multitudes.
Floating in My Mother’s Palm | Germany
I finished my first German book, Floating in My Mother’s Palm by Ursula Hegi (or at least, my first German book that I’m not reading for my WWII project). Overview: This book takes place just after World War II in the town of Burgdorf, Germany. Our main character is Hanna, a girl between the ages of unborn and 14…
Tyger Tyger 