Books, Books, Books: Part Three

One person gave me these three books! It's extraordinary to say that I have never read Night by Elie Wiesel, which is now assigned in high school (9th to 12th grade):

It is 1944. The Jews of Sighet, Hungary are rounded up and driven into Nazi concentration camps. For the next terrible year, young Elie Wiesel experiences the loss of everything he loves — home, friends, family — in an agonizing journey through Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. The greatest tragedy of our time, told through the eyes of a 15-year old boy.

Night is a terrifying account of the Nazi death-camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, his innocence, and his god. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Nor have I read anything in French for awhile:

This is the first mystery Simenon wrote with Inspector Jules Maigret! I guess if I can't read it in French, I'll have to buy the "crib"from Penguin!

And, in keeping with my other post today on the state/fate of Notre-Dame de Paris, it seems appropriate to highlight this book too:

According to Pan Macmillan:

In this wonderfully readable book, Alistair Horne tells the huge and romantic story of Paris through seven ages of turmoil and change: the Middle Ages, the 100 years war, the Paris of Louis XIV, the age of Napoleon, the Commune, the Empire days of Louis-Napoleon and Eugenie, and the First World War and De Gaulle. Interweaving historical narrative with telling detail, this is a fluent and definitive work of social and cultural history.

Soon, I'll let you know about my favorite books read in 2019!