Sarah's Key

Absolutely heartbreaking story, this poor jewish family gets taken away and because she doesn't understand locks her brother in a hidden closet they had in their apt. Of course she isn't aloud to come back... The story is very good beyond all the sadness adn I never really knew about the Vel d'Hiv (sp?) that occurred in France.... SO sad.

Great read though.

Respectable Trade

I really like Philippa Gregory as an author. I think she is an amazing historical fiction writer, she knows how to pull you in and keep the story interesting. This was a different type of story than she normally writes (King Henry 8th), but because I like her I decided to give it a try.

It's about a woman who marries this man because she really has no other prospects and this guy wants to move up in the world by marrying her. He owns a shipping company with three ships and quickly moves onto slave trade. They also devise a scheme where they will bring a few good looking slaves back, train them in english and household chores and then sell them. Now of course the woman has no say in any of this because she is "owned" by her husband, so she gets stuck training these slaves and falls in love with one of the male slaves. Then the husband goes way too far into debt and you can probably guess how the story plays out.

It was nicely written but really not that great. I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters.

Moloka'i

This book is about Hansens Disease, more well known as leprosy. It tells how way back when Hawians were so frightened of this disease that if anyone got it they were shipped off to this quarantined settlement and had to live their lives out there. Didn't matter your age or anything, you were immediately shipped off and potentially might never see your family again. Many times the family were then shunned because people blamed them that someone in their family had gotten this horrible disease.

It is a beautifully written book, I never wanted to put it down, and the story of this one girl, taken from her family at age 7, and how she still had a wonderful life. She never let her disease get her down and it really was such a beautiful story.

I would most definitely suggest reading this!!!

Those Who Save Us

The story of this book is about a woman (Anna) who is German and lives in Weimar, Germany at the time of WWII. She falls in love with a Jewish Doctor, gets pregnant and then it follows through how she existed during the war. It is also written in a second viewpoint of her daughter (Trudy) as a grownup who is a professor whose special study is WWII and how the german females were affected by the war.

It's interesting because Anna does not speak to her daughter at all about how she became a mistress to an SS officer or anything that happened before they moved to America after the war. She is ultimately shut down and pretends as if Trudy's life started the day they moved when in essence she was probably 4 or so before they did.

I never really fell in love with any of the characters. It was interesting to me to read a WWII book from a German viewpoint, and Anna's story was interesting, but I just never really cared what happened. I mean here we have a woman and her daughter who could potentially die at any minute and for some reason I just didn't believe it. Anna never really struck me as an actual person, and neither did grown up Trudy, so maybe that was what the author was going for.

And then, the ending just sucks. So overall, not a very good book. Plenty better ones to read!

Loving Frank

Loving Frank is the story of the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and Martha (Mamah) Borthwick Cheney. They both left their significant others and kids to go traveling abroad and try to have a life together. This happened at a time where woman had no liberties and thus most of the story is how they dealt with the repercussions of this hugely monumental choice to leave and live together openly flaunting the norm. Then they also had the troubles of Frank Wright who was bad with money and living a real life. He was rather eccentric and focused largely on his architecture.

I enjoyed reading about Mamah and how she was able to make very hard decisions that were incredibly painful but ultimately allowed her to live a happy and fulfilled life rather than just settling. I am still rather unsure how I felt about how she went about it. When she finally left her husband she did it by going abroad. Thus she was unable to see her children for the next two years. And they were very young when (3 and 7) so by the time she came back the youngest one didn't even remember her. And even when she was finally back in the states her ex husband there only allowed her to see them once a year or so. I think it's very important to live your life, but I did not like how the kids faired.

The book is interesting to read, but it doesn't keep you reading. I didn't have a problem putting it down and the writing sometimes got bogged down in descriptions and Mamah's melacholiness as she ruminated over her choices, but as long as you make yourself pick it up it's enjoyable. The ending is completely unexpected and very very sad. I actually needed to look it up to make sure it was fact because of how horribly random it is. But that's life.

I read this for a book club and I do think it's a good choice for that. There are certainly numerous different discussion points that are available from it.

The Lady Elizabeth

The Lady Elizabeth is about Queen Elizabeth's life before she was crowned. I've always loved historical fiction and the time era of the Tudors and Queen Elizabeth is one of my favorites. Thus I have read everything by Philippa Gregory as well as many other books about this time period. This book doesn't really have much new information except for one main thing. She suggests that Elizabeth actually got pregnant by the Admiral and had a miscarriage. This was something I had never heard of. Elizabeth is always protrayed as being very sickly at times so I believe all the other books I've read just passed off the time when Weir suggests she was pregnant as a time she was merely ill.

Other than that it was a an interesting read and it was definetly a different point of view than others I have run. Elizabeth intruiges me greatly at how much she enjoyed being a leader, but also in how much effort and hard work she put into everything in order to be the greatest leader she can be. So if anyone else is interested in her as well, I certainly reccomend this book.