Those Who Save Us

The book for discussion in May is about a mother's desperate attempt to save her own daughter from the Nazis during World War II in Berlin. Travel between today as the mother is losing touch with reality and the war years when the mother is trying to survive as a single mother. Try to understand her story and the story the daughter understands. Written by a young woman who has spent four years interviewing Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. This is her first work of fiction.

Jodi Picoult

My Sister's Keeper is coming out in June at the movie theater. Look at the video of Jodi Picoult's intervies on NPR's Relgion and Ethics by clicking onto the title of this post.

Going Solo by Roald Dahl

This is a good book to read after you read "The Irregulars". It starts in 1938 when Roald Dahl begins his move to Africa to work for the Shell Oil Company as a 22 year old. It isn't long before he is caught up in the war and trains as a pilot in the Middle East. Good British Empire history included in the background.

Spies on American Soil

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington
by Jennet Conant.
I finished this last weekend, first reading about one fourth and then picking up the audio version. It was very interesting. I think that the conclusion was that Britain and America were close because Churchill and Roosevelt trusted one another. Unfortunately, the Americans closed the door to the British after the war. I know they were facing food shortages after the war. I never really understood why the Americans didn't help. It will only want me to read more. A couple of years ago I read a very shocking book on American foreign policy, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, published 2004. It made me question all my long held beliefs about the good in the American government. I was at the bookstore last week and was surprised to see the book is now out in paperback and was located on a table for high school reading. So, someone is listening. Pick up the Irregulars if you like world war II spy stores, only this time it is in Washington and it is a true story.
Associate of Ian Fleming and William Stevenson, it an interesting book.

My Sister's Keeper

We are reading this Jodi Picoult book for our Book Lover's Discussion group, April 27 at 7 pm. This author's books are always jumping off the shelves here at the Tipp City Library. She writes about serious topics that are considered "ripped from the headlines". Difficult subjects that are hard to face for certain people who want their books to have a happy ending. Don't expect that from Jodi Picoult. Expect to be challanged in your thinking, what would you do in a certain dilemma, what would be the moral thing to do, what is the acceptable way of thinking? Her line of thinking stretches the readers mind around a different way of viewing the subject. After we read this book about a daughter and her parents and how they think, we are going to read, Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum. Two different points of view are presented in Blum's book, the daughter who never understood her own mother, and the mother who could never tell her own daughter what she had to endure to survive. We never will know how or what we would do in different circumstances.