Coffee Book of the Week

This weeks book is a classic that I picked up because I had enjoyed his other books that I had read and this one may be my second favorite of his to this point. Again I had not heard much about the book I just got it because it was written by Ernest Hemingway.

 

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

 

This book was first published in 1926 and was second novel but the first major success for him. The central idea of this book was really a narrative about the "Lost Generation". The young veterans of WWI that had trouble returning to the norm after the war was over traveling abroad to get away from the responsibilities back home. 

 

The story follows Jake Barnes, an injured fighter pilot, who can't get over being shot down in the war so he travels around Europe with his buddies Mike, Bill and Robert. He is in love with a woman, Lady Brett Ashley, who is taking the independence given to women during the war to a whole new level. All of the men in the novel are after Brett in one way or another. At the beginning of the novel she is engaged to Mike, but at one point in the novel you find out Brett once had a short affair with Robert, who spends the entire novel trying to win her back. They travel from Paris to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls. They all drink too much and party too hard with no apparent consequences other than maybe the occasional fight or an indiscretion that later merits an apology. Hemingway's description of the running of the bulls and later the bull fights themselves is graphic and the prose he uses really makes you feel like you are sitting around the drinking table with this crew or sitting in the stands with them.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Coffee Book of the Week

The book this week is not a long one (just over 200 pages) or one that I had heard much about before I read it. Don't get me wrong I had heard the title and seen it on bestseller lists but had not heard much about the premise. The inaugural book for my weekly book posts is one that really tugged at the heartstrings and showed something we have all heard, read and talked about many times before in a different light.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Since I hadn't heard much about the book it was very exciting "figuring out" what was going on and understanding what the narrator, a young 9 year old German boy, was talking about. Because everything is told from his point of view and in his vocabulary there are several key words and phrases that he uses in the book long before you actually figure out what they mean. This is going to be spoiler free but I just wanted to give everyone an idea of how ingenious the author uses the boys imagination and young mind to bring full circle Nazi Germany and what it would look like too a child.

The book starts out with the child, Bruno, upset that he is having to leave his friends and move out of Berlin. His father is in the army and "the Fury" has come to his home and asked them to relocate to a place he calls "Out With" as a promotion and great opportunity for his father's career. At his new home, which by his standards is not as much fun as his old house, he is surrounded by soldiers and fences. The fences contain lots of people that are all wearing striped pajamas and he is confused by why he is separated from them and why he doesn't get a pair of striped pjs. In his explorations he meets a boy about his age that he becomes friends with. There is, in his mind, no reason why they should not be friends.

I was floored by how this book made me feel. Anger, sadness, and still after all the years studying the Holocaust still shocked. The ending is amazing and I was surprised after such a short novel how well I identified with Bruno and how sometimes I just sit back and wonder why things that are happening, are happening? By the way "The Fury" is the furor and "Out With" is Auschwitz which was the largest concentration camp but I am sure you already figured that out. There is also a movie made from the book but I haven't brought myself to watch it yet, I don't know how it could even compare to the book.
RATING - 9.5 out of 10