I was looking for something powerful, something meaningful, and my friend Devorah told me I had to read To Vanquish the Dragon. That was way back in June. I had been carrying it around ever since, thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it soon.” I really did want to read it, but once I actually had it in my hands, I wasn’t exactly eager to delve into a Holocaust narrative. When it comes to Holocaust books, after The Diary of Anne Frank and Number the Stars readers move on to Eli Weisel’s Night and then get stuck. Children’s book seems “safe” when dealing with such a difficult and intense topic. In this regard, To Vanquish the Dragon is a very special book.

The book is told through the eyes of Pearl Benisch. She was in her late teens during World War II, and she came from an upper class, well educated, religious Jewish family. She describes her experiences from the invasion of Poland to her time in the Displaced Persons camps after the war. She was placed in a variety of camps, from the early work camps to Auschwitz itself, which makes her narrative a whole, complete one. Her focus is on the special young women who were her friends, students, teachers and mentors before the War broke out. She and her friends came from the Beth Jacob Girls Schools, which was an educational movement in the Jewish world just reaching maturity when World War II broke out.

These Beth Jacob girls were taught to care for one another, to have faith in G-d, and to dedicate themselves to helping their community. It is because of this focus that the author is able to share her experiences, and it gives the book a focus that helps the reader make their way through the immense tragedy and tiny triumphs the author experiences. Mrs. Benisch is sharing her experience to tell the stories of those who were lost and those who made survival possible, and this helps the reader continue on through the intense narrative.

This book does not gloss over, nor is it overly graphic. There are some miracles, and while small, they are triumphant. And there is of course senseless tragedy. There are parts of it that seem to become overly detailed and sometimes the author goes on tangents about various people, but it reads like someone telling you a story. You accept the tangents because you know there is something very important in the message. To Vanquish the Dragon is a very special book that bears witness to moments that marked those that experienced them for life. For anyone who wants to understand more about the Holocaust, it is a must read.

Grade: A

My Life in France

Oh for the love of Meryl Streep. I mean, who doesn’t love her? Due to my undying Meryl love, I ended up watching Julie & Julia, a movie which I only ½ loved. The Meryl half that is. Her portrayal of Julia Child was remarkable, so I picked up her autobiography My Life in France to discover more about this fascinating woman.

Now that I have read her book, I know for a fact that not only was Julia Child one of the most amazing chefs, but she is also truly inspirational. She moved to France with her husband when she was 37 years old. She couldn’t cook, she couldn’t speak French, she couldn’t do any of the things that she would be acclaimed for by the time she died at the age of 92 in 2004.

Some people say that life really only begins in the second act, and Julia Child proved this at a time when women didn’t go out and start a new profession at 40. She refused to take trouble or criticism from anyone, and with the amazing support of her husband Paul, she carved out a whole for herself 6 foot 2 inches tall that left an indelible mark on the world.

The book wavers at points. It is really just a collection of stories about her life, the central thesis of which her attempts to publish her first cookbook. There are some references which fly right over the head of anyone not coming of age in the 50s or 60s, mostly pieces about politics and fads, but this doesn’t take too much away from the overall story. There are also a few dozen French phrases, words, and conversations which are not translated for the reader. I did not say Miss Julia wasn’t a snob.

Overall, a charming and inspirational biography.

Grade: B+

There are two ways that I do not like books. I do not like to shop for books online and I do not like to take books out from the library. Why not online? Because I can’t really look and feel the book before I purchase. A true book love needs to have at least felt the weight of the tome in their hand in order to appreciate what they about to purchase. Why not the library? Just because I want a book does not mean I am going to read it right away. I have books that I know I want to read eventually, but I have to get into the mood to read them, so they could sit on the book shelf for a year before I read them. And I have to have a full “to be read shelf”. It’s just how I read. But when my husband got free gift cards to Amazon.com, I knew right away I was going to use them for books, but what should I buy? Ahh! Super Saver books! And for $4.88, this is how I came to own Miss American Pie by Margaret Sartor.

Miss American Pie is an autobiography of Margaret Sartor, an average American girl from Louisiana growing up in the 70s. The unique aspect of the book is that Sartor simply published her diaries starting from when she was about 13 years old until she graduates from high school. She did very little editing of the diaries, so as not to taint the pure perspectives of her adolescent self through her adult eyes. And in reading the book, you can feel that this is really true.

The book chronicles everything from her teenage hormones, her discovery of spirituality, her body issues, her parental issues, her understanding of politics in an honest adolescent way. This creates a beautiful portrait of adolescence which, despite its setting in the 1970s, is applicable to anyone who has been through the angst of being a teenager. It does get tedious at times, which vividly reminded me of the monotony adolescent drama can play in life. Sometimes, if you aren’t in the right frame of mind, it can be a little difficult to relate to the whining, especially if you are older, because you know that looking back she would realize she was being selfish at times.

I recommend this for older teenage girls and moms who want to be reminded what it’s like to be in these girls heads.

Grade: B-

For my birthday last spring, my husband bought me Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. My husband hates buying me books as gifts. He says that I go through them too quickly and he feels like it wasn’t really worthwhile. Sometimes in book stores, he scours the largest book he can find and hands it to me, telling me I should read it. It doesn’t matter what the book is, it could be instructions for how to do a snow dance in India, but if it is several hundred pages, he will hand it to me. That’s why he bought me The 9/11 Report. “It’s the biggest bang for the buck,” he says. Poor guy, it’s tough being married to someone who really loves to read more than most things in life, and reads as fast as I do. So when he bought me the book I was surprised, and tried very hard to read it slowly. There really is nothing to get a book lover other than a book, even he admits this, much to his chagrin.

I really like Steve Martin. I won’t lie and say I am a die-hard fan or anything, because I’m not . And honestly, I am about 20 years too young to really appreciate the wackiness that was Martin in the 70s and 80s, but still I really like him. I really wanted to read this book, because my friend Paul forced his two novellas (Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company) on me and I found them delightful. So I couldn’t wait to see how he would write about his own life. Alas, in this case my friend William is right when he observes that “Optimists are always disappointed, pessimists are always pleasantly surprised.”

This book chronicles Martin’s life from his childhood in Southern California with his hard to please father, to his exploits in his early career, roaming comedy clubs, to his current passions now in life. He is terse on many aspects of his life that would seem amusing, his career and famous friendships, and he is overly verbose on aspects of his life that are just not interest, his relationship with his father and his current passion for art. He skims through his life until the 80s and then fast forwards to today and explains what his life is comprised of now. It is basically collection of not so witty anecdotes that comprise his life, according to him.

My thoughts walking away from this are sometimes, genius shouldn’t be explained. The wackiness that is Martin is something that doesn’t seem tangible, explainable, or appropriate when coming out of the mind of this middle aged, strait laced writer. It’s just hard to believe that today he is as pretentious and (honestly) boring as he portrays himself in his writing. He seems to have forgotten who he was back then, and therefore finds himself at a loss to explain it in any amusing or interesting kind of way. Martin seems to have fallen victim to the conventional wisdom that the hardest thing to write about, is yourself. If you like Steve Martin, and want to continue liking him, don’t read this book. And thanks a lot Paul, for making me like him in the first place.

Grade: C-/D+

Sometimes I get downright desperate for books. I have a difficult time reading most contemporary literature. But as I see one could become jaded by reading only books from before the 1960s, I try to follow the advice, I think from C.S. Lewis, that says you should read one classic, then one contemporary book. As a book snob, I find it difficult to trust in contemporary literature, so when I wander in the book store on the hunt for something newer, I find myself baffled at my choices. This is how I stumbled across The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein. Desperate for something new to read, it was a $5 special at Target. How could I turn it down when I needed a book and was shopping on a budget?

The Invisible Wall (subtitled A Love Story that Broke Barriers) is the tale of a lower class Jewish family who live in a poorer neighborhood in Manchester during World War I. An auto-biographical tale, it is told through the eyes of a young boy named Harry who watches his sister Lily attempt to create a life with her Christian beaux Arthur. Their neighborhood is divided, Christian from Jewish, by an invisible wall down the middle of their street. Lily and Arthur dare to cross that wall.

I found the family life of the Bernstein family much more compelling than that of Lily and Arthur, quite frankly. Their absent father is a drunk, their poor bedraggled mother struggles to make ends meet, and the five children struggle to stand out and be noticed as unique. They each try to break out of the cycle of poverty that has trapped their neighbors and parents. The author becomes so focused on this tale, he neglects the love story, the supposed focus, until two-thirds of the way through the book.

The love story itself is not very compelling, and a conflicting tale. While the author tries to promote Lily and Arthur’s love as beautiful, it reads like a tragic assimilation tale, ending well for no one. This book is a cheap attempt at Angela’s Ashes, but is not quite of the same caliber.

Grade: C