One of these things is not like the others...
Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben MacintyreMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I started this book and it was just ok. Then somewhere along the way it got AWESOME and I started wanting to tell Jeremy All The Things about it, but not too much, because I also wanted him to just read it. It's interesting to see how most of spying is just sitting around, interspersed with frantic flurries of dangerous activity.
I loved how the author sometimes tracked down minor sideplots to flesh out the story. Sometimes you read a book and a person/event is mentioned in passing but you'd like to know more. Macintyre has a sense for which to hand over a chapter to and which to leave by the wayside, keeping this book plenty interesting!
View all my reviews
81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness by Brian MurphyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Good, but not great. A book about such an amazing story of survival should have been better than this. As it was, I think source material was thin, so the author had to grasp a little. It's funny, because the book I read just before this one was always taking pleasant side-trips into peripheral characters or events, and I really enjoyed it. But this book's side-trips took away from the strength and momentum of the main story. It reminded me of Victor Hugo - in Les Misérables, for example, if a character passes, say, a well, then we get a hundred pages about that well and how it came to be there. Much of the same is going on in this book, and it drags down the whole story.
View all my reviews
Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell ZuckoffMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A pretty solid good time. I find it interesting that more and more nonfiction books these days involve the author in the story - I wonder what this book would have been like without that element. Maybe not long enough? The modern-day parts about the efforts to find the plane stressed me out more than the parts about men huddling to keep warm in snow warrens in 1942, somehow. I think overall, it was done well, but the author-as-character wasn't as compelling as it was in The Secret Rooms, for example.
Still, Zuckoff comes off as totally likeable and it made me want to re-read Lost in Shangri-la. Plus, those guys in the snow warrens in 1942...wow.
View all my reviews
Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine PatersonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I gave this to my 10-year-old daughter to read and she just couldn't get into it. So I decided to pick it up myself and re-read it for the first time in 20 years.
I have always objectively realized and remembered how much I loved this book as a young girl, but upon re-reading, I realized how much of an effect this book really had on me during my formative years. In many ways, this book was the lens through which I interpreted my life, and I can still feel its effects. As a girl, I felt like I WAS Sarah Louise, even though I didn't have a twin, I didn't live on a remote island during WW2, and I was fortunate enough to never lack for opportunities in life. That shows masterful work on the part of the author. Some books get you to sympathize with a main character by making them a blank slate upon which you can project your own personality; of course you then identify with that character's struggles. But Paterson has somehow created here a very unique, well-defined character who lives in a very specific place and time - and yet this character's struggles speak directly to your heart.
TL;DR - I re-read this book for the first time in 20 years and it still made me cry like it did when I was a little girl.
PS - As a child, I did not know what the song "I Wonder as I Wander" sounded like, and those parts in the book STILL gave me the chills. (We did not have YouTube in the olden days, so I couldn't just go look it up.) I will never forget finally hearing that song by chance as an adult and how it made those scenes in the book retroactively even MORE chill-inducing.
Original review
First eleventy-seven readings: I wish my 12-year-old self could give this book TWENTY stars. Oh how I loved this book.
View all my reviews
