With World War II history, it’s very difficult to find new ways to tell the story and/or new stories to tell. This portion of history has definitely reached an over-saturation point. This book, however, defies that over-saturation and presents a really captivating, thought-provoking story that combines personal memoir with history. In this narrative, the author alternates chapters between her own personal search into an aspect of her family’s history that was kept secret for decades with the telling of that story that she discovered. In the memoir portions, the author explains how she had to wrestle with the revelation that all of her father‘s immediate family, save one younger brother, were complicit in spying for the axis powers in the lead up to and during the early months of World War II. She also takes a look at how this affected her father who rejected the Nazi ideologies that his parents and two older siblings, wholeheartedly, supported, and how he actually had to testify against his father in a trial, where the outcome was expected to be his father’s execution. This was a very well told story.
For several years, I followed a lot of CrossFit content and became very familiar with a lot of the major names, including Annie Thorisdottir. I always appreciate memoirs for the opportunity to get a look into someone’s experience and how that shaped them. As I started reading this memoir, I found myself really engaged with Annie’s perspective on her upbringing, and what led her to become the competitor that she is today. Towards the 60% mark, my interest started to wane, not because things have changed significantly, but more because they hadn’t. At a certain point, the memoir became more about the grind of the CrossFit competitions, and less about personal introspection. That did shift towards the later pages of the memoir where she discusses her decision with her partner Frederick to start their family and her journey to coming back to competition after becoming a mother. The fact that these events which took place in 2021 made up the final pages of the memoir, which is just about to come out which is coincidentally before the tragic death of another CrossFit competitor at the opening event of the 2024 CrossFit games, which has changed a lot about how many competitors approached the sport. It also came before her transition to participating as a team member which from the way that she ended this memoir seems a bit odd because she ended the memoir on the high note of her third place finish in the 2021 games seeming like she was completely done with CrossFit. It’s interesting to think about what led into these various decisions, but overall I do still recommend this memoir.
I absolutely love the cover design for this book. I also really appreciated the narrator and her authentic pronunciation of the Spanish included in the book. Beyond that, however, this narrative did not do anything to make it stand out in any way amongst the plethora of other young adults, contemporary, coming-of-age novels that I have read. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad book. It just means that it felt average. In this narrative, the main character set out on a fellowship volunteer opportunity that she needs to complete as part of her high school’s honors program. She is living with her grandmother and her mother, although at the time of the narrative, her mother is in another country working on a research project as part of her job as a geology professor. The main character chooses a community garden organization because she discovers that her father – shortly prior to his tragic death at the hands of a drunk driver – created this program and was about to resign his university professorship. She also has a meet-cute with a boy who is also volunteering at the program who is a sort of ex of her best friend. The driving conflict of this narrative ends up being the secrets that she’s keeping from all these various people yes, I understand how such a thing can drive a plot. However, this type of narrative conflict gets old quickly. I do not think this was a bad book, just not one that greatly grabbed my attention.
This book far surpassed my expectations. I expected a fairly “normal” true crime story. The author takes that expectation and turns it on its head. This narrative tells the story of a man who had grand plans but nefarious ways of trying to achieve those plans, basically a con man who couldn’t get away with his con for very long. To keep from paying the actual consequences of his actions, he turned jailhouse informant, even when he had nothing true to inform on. These actions brought him into “contact” with the other subject of the book, a man who seemingly had it all but suffered from PTSD for his time in Vietnam and ended up losing a lot of it to alcohol. He ended up convicted of murder based on – in large part – the testimony of the aforementioned con man. I really appreciated how the author was these two stories together and how she didn’t just make things up to give a satisfying thing. I highly recommend this book.
July appears to be bringing me lots of strong, compelling reads in a row.
This narrative is a fictional story based on some of the experiences of the author. The main character has the opportunity to leave the Diné reservation and attend a prestigious boarding school in New England. When he does so he leaves behind his mom, his grandma, and his great grandma whose health is failing and a woman who has reactions he does not understand to him going off to boarding school. Once at the school, he faces the reality that the school requires a lot of work. Throughout the narrative, he is trying to balance all of these different pressures on his time with school and family and also researching the sordid history of residential schools. The author did a fantastic job with telling this story. I will not tell more about the plot since it should be best experienced through a firsthand reading of this story. I highly recommend this book.
I pick up this book right on the heel of a young adult fiction with a native main character. That’s my mind already felt primed to learn more about the native experience although in this work of non-fiction it centers the experience of the aboriginal people of Australia. The author did a phenomenal job telling not only her story, but also the stories of her people, her huge passion for forgetting them to help that they need and the frustration of a system designed against them. I learned quite a lot about Australian history and gained more empathy for how trauma various kinds affects a person. Once again, I highly recommend this book.
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