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Starting a new Lego set

“Major Picquart to see the Minister of War…”
#firstlinefridays @ShyBookOwl

A novel about the historical Dreyfus Affair, late 1890s France, in which a Jewish officer in the French army was (knowingly) wrongly convicted of treason and sent to Devil‘s Island. Picquart was the officer who came to believe in his innocence.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Series of essays that make a compelling case for her thesis that people love dead Jews and stories of dead Jews more than they care about the lives of the living Jews. Learned a lot (e.g, that last name changes on arrival at Ellis Island is a myth) and thought about unlit I‘d never really had to confront as a non-Jew. I found the narration a little grating, but otherwise a definite pick.

This is a novel with a lot of secrets. There‘s a hint of Shirley Jackson and Poe to the unnerving atmosphere but it‘s missing the tension and drama for me. The prose is deliberately obtuse, the narrator unwilling or unable to speak directly, and the reader is left to decide much of what has happened for themselves. I like being challenged but the effort doesn‘t seem to pay off. I‘m not sure we are given enough to fully trust the author. 5/10

For the first candle of my #Hanukkahchallenge I‘ve picked a book that pushed me towards the idea of celebrating each Hanukkah day by writing about a book about a Jew or written by a Jew. I picked it because I hoped to find an answer to a question: why so many people tear down the portraits of Israeli hostages held in Gaza while respecting dead Holocaust victims. The book is well written, but I didn‘t like the answer #iamthatjew

“The first time I entered Jerusalem‘s Old City, I walked down a flight of stairs that began on the current street level; at the bottom, I was stunned to step onto the paving stones from the street level during the Roman period, as though I had traveled through time instead of rock.”
Have you ever been there? Did you feel the time captured in stone? #told_by_a_woman #iamthatjew

Another recently finished book. This one sits between a so-so and a pick for me. A difficult and challenging read, I suspect that I would glean more from it on a second read. Set in the present in a norther country, it is a story of historical injustices and the ways that communities avoid facing their past, and personal complicity in those injustices. Not a fun read, but I think there is something worth the difficulty here.

Book cover scavenger hunt for #HauntedShelf I am trying to find them in books that I own.

This has been on my shelf for years. I should probably #readordonate at this point!

#Flerken

Amazing book. Very personable and personal, while still relating to an arc of issues. 10/10 one of my highest ratings yet.

#52bookclub24 #anonfictionbookrecommendedbyafriend #summerchallenge #wrestling
#aty24 #abookrecommendedbyafriend