Double-Stacked Bookshelves

Teaser Tuesdays:  In Paradise   Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB @ Should Be Reading . Here are the rules: grab whatever you're reading, open to a random page, select no more than two sentence (NO SPOILERS), share the title and author, and GO! Here's the teaser for this week: "The cold of winter afternoon falls quickly.  Toward twilight, as the witness bearers straggle back toward the town, a weak sun, smoggy red, sinks behind the cropped misshapen trees along the road.  A woman murmurs that a faint odor of burning flesh still lingers here a half century later, and someone else recalls her mother's account of a woman who had smelled her fate while approaching Oswiecim in the cattle cars." --page 61           ----- In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen A heavy teaser today...but they can't all be light and fluffy. Happy reading!

Happy Tuesday, fellow A-Zers.  Today brings us to the letter S and it's all about:  W.G. Sebald, Art Spiegelman, and Alexander McCall Smith. W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) German writer W.G. Sebald is pure brilliance.  Prior to his untimely death in 2001, Sebald was heralded as one of the greatest living authors and believed to be a future Nobel Prize winner for Literature.  His father was a member of the Reichswehr in1929 and then transitioned as a member of the Wehrmacht under the Nazis, though he remained a fairly detached figure.  During World War II, Sebald's father was a prisoner of war until 1947.  Because of much of his experience during the Nazi Regime, Sebald focuses the majority of his work on the Holocaust and post-war Germany.  Heavy themes of memory and loss of memory (both personal and collective) and decay run rampant through his work.  In addition, he utilizes elaborate and old-fashioned language in the original German inte...

I must admit that historical fiction is one of my favorite genres; especially when the time period is surrounding World War II.  Because of this, my J author is:  Pam Jenoff. Pam Jenoff  An American author, Pam Jenoff has spent much of her career working for the government in various support positions.  From being the Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army to working in the Foreign Service with the State Department where she was placed in Poland assisting on an Auschwitz restitution project, Jenoff has gained the background knowledge and experience necessary to make her novels believable for the time period in which they are set.  This ability has garnered her much recognition and best-seller status.  Her writing pulls you in and the novels are quick to read.  Check them out . *Recommendation:  The Kommandant's Girl and The Diplomat's Wife Who are some of your favorite J authors?

Happy Thursday, fellow A-Zers, and welcome to the letter C.  Today is all about:  Paul Celan and Italo Calvino. Paul Celan (1920-1970) A Romanian poet and translator, Paul Celan is best known for his Holocaust writing, especially "Todesfuge," and his belief that writing in the German language was the only way to effectively address the atrocities suffered during the war.  Both of Celan's parents died in labor camps and he was imprisoned from 1942 to 1944 when the Russian army evacuated all Romanian camps.  Celan suffered extreme guilt in regards to his parents' deaths and used his writing as a way to convey these feelings.  He would eventually flee Eastern Europe, settling in Paris where he published his first collection of poetry, Der Sand aus den Urnen ( The Sand from the Urns ), in 1948.  At the time, many found his poetry too harsh sounding, but Celan eventually became known as the Holocaust writer.  He committed suicide jumping in to...

I've figured out my guiding topic for the month!  I'm feeling very accomplished today.  This entire challenge will be focused on writers I truly enjoy or who have influence my readings/writings in some way.  I hope people will explore some of the authors/works I discuss throughout the month. For the letter B, I've got four stand out writers who have shaped my reading preferences:  Charles Baudelair, Jorge Luis Borges, Tadeusz Borowski, and Chris Bohjalian. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) A French poet, essayist, art critic, and Poe translator, Baudelaire focused on the industrialization of Parisian society during the 19th century.  He believed that it was art's purpose to capture the fleeting experience of life in the urban landscape.  Perhaps his most famous work, Las Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), published in 1857, highlighted themes of sex, death, decomposition, decay, metamorphosis, melancholia, and various vices.  The volume was ...