Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in January. This year I am changing my reading challenge a little bit to diversify my reading habits even more. A lot of the books I read last year had no prompt at all (26%), and the genres that I read the most were fantasy (25%) and nonfiction (26%). So this year, I am adding some prompts to focus more on the genres I am reading, but I am also eliminating others, like the BOTM prompt. The prompts that I am keeping from my previous Reading Challenge are: (1) Start A Series, (2) Finish A Series, (3) Library Book, (4) Book Club Book, (5) Nonfiction, (6) Classic, (7) E-book, (8) Book in Spanish, (9) YA, and (10) Self-Published. The new prompts are: (11) Contemporary Fiction, (12) Fantasy and Science Fiction, (13) Literary Fiction, (14) Historical Fiction, (15) Romance, (16) Thriller, and (17) Mystery.
Obviously I won’t be able to complete all of these prompts every month and I will probably read several books of the same or similar genre (for example, I may read several nonfiction books) a month, but the purpose is to assign a prompt to every book I read. So, let’s start. The books I read in January are:
1. BOOK CLUB BOOK: The Light of Days by Judy Batalion
This book needs to be read. In The Light of Days, Judy Batalion, the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, sets out to tell the story of incredible, courageous, and heroic Jewish women in Poland who transformed Jewish youth groups, like Freedom and the Youth Guards, into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. Some of these girls were still in their teens, among them Renia Kukiełka, who was 15 years old, when the Germans invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. Witnesses to the death of their families and the rounding up of Jewish communities into closed-in ghettos inside the city, like cattle, the “ghetto girls” chose to stay and fight back against the atrocities the Nazis committed throughout the war by transporting forged documents and others to safety, raising funds for weapons, and smuggling them back into the ghettos, by flirting, bribing, and seducing German soldiers to kill them, and by nursing the sick and teaching the children.
Renia Kukiełka was a courier and weapons smuggler for Freedom, and it is her story that the author focuses primarily on. But other notable names include Zivia Lubetkin, a Freedom leader in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Frumka Płotnicka and her younger sister Hantze Płotnicka, Chajka Klinger, leader of the Young Guards, Bela Hazan, a Freedom courier who, like Renia, was later arrested and taken to a concentration camp, as well as Chasia Bielicka and Chaika Grossman, two Young Guard couriers. All of these women, and others that I do not mention here, but who were no less heroic and courageous, were paragon warriors and their fight is one worth remembering. Wars are not pretty though, and none of the women who survived the war, including Renia, came out of this one unscathed. Reading about how some of these women lived with survivor’s guilt after the war was hard. Several parts of this book were hard to read, but I still think that this is something we should never forget about and I encourage you to pick a copy of this book up.
2. NONFICTION: Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones
Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones is the fourth book that I read by this author and it is a panoramic account of the Middle Ages, from AD 410 to AD 1527. The Middle Ages are “an awkward slab consisting of about one thousand years between ‘the primitive time’ or the classical world, and ‘our latter days’ of the modern world.” This middle age of a thousand years brings to mind images of war, destruction, and death as opposed to the scientific and cultural advancement of Antiquity.
But Dan Jones does a superb job at telling us that the so-called Dark Ages, a moniker that caricatures the medieval past as a time of permanent intellectual night, are severely maligned and that the Middle Ages are in fact as important an era for human history as both the Classical world and modernity. In fact, the Middle Ages changed the world. The first thing about Dan Jones and his books though is that he keeps the general reader in mind and seeks to make reading history an enjoyable enterprise. And he succeeds. Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages is not the exception. The title of the book is self-explanatory, but it is a huge task and the author knows it. A thousand years is a long time, so he focuses on explaining how the Middle Ages shaped the world we know today.
Few events in history are as colossal as the fall of an empire, in this case, Rome, which was synonymous with prosperity, wealth, knowledge, and military strength. The collapse of Rome, caused by mass migration and climate change, marked the end of an era. Power shifted and now the barbarians (and their pagan religions) are at the helm. But the Christian world fights back and the Byzantine Empire, more powerful than its western counterpart at this point, takes precedence over the unruly barbarian and overrules him. The Byzantine Empire however is later threatened by the Arabs, a new player in the game, and are quick to show their power with the scimitar.
The fight for dominance over one another ensues and the Christians, this time led by the Franks, create their monkish and knightly orders, among them, the Hospitallers and the Templars, and retaliate with the Crusades. Then, the Mongols enter the picture and everything is altered once again. Genghis Khan made quite an impact, I’d say. But in this period of rebirth less warlike personages start taking center stage as well. These include the merchants of Venice and Genoa, scholars like Erasmus, Augustine, and Saint Teresa, and the builders of castles and other impressive architectural masterpieces that still stand today. No account of the Middle Ages, however, is complete if it does not talk about the Black Death and how it swept through Western Europe during the 14th Century. Trade from China and Central Asia likely carried the bubonic plague to Europe but it during this period that navigators also start venturing further into unknown parts of the world, and new land is discovered forever changing the map of the world. Finally, the event that brought the Middle Ages to a close was The Reformation, led by Martin Luther, who questioned and defied the power of the Catholic Church in Europe.
Though massive in scale, this book is an enjoyable read and I Really Liked It.
3. ROMANCE: To Sir Philip, With Love by Julia Quinn
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about To Sir Philip, With Love by Julia Quinn. I read this book for a book club and, sad to say, I did not like it. My main complaint is that it describes extensively very mundane actions and I particularly disliked how the author wrote Philip’s children Amanda and Oliver. I got tired of their pranks pretty early on, and found that the parts in which they showed up were very boring. I understand their role in the story and how their relationship with Eloise helps the heroine strengthen her own relationship with Philip, but I did not like how they were written. I also thought that they had more chapters than was merited to the detriment of Eloise and Philip’s romance.
Maybe because this was my first Bridgerton book, and I did not get to meet Eloise before but I wasn’t particularly impressed by her. In fact, I didn’t connect with her at all even though she is a much loved character in this series and is the smartest woman in her family. But I have not been privy to her family dynamic, and her role as the protagonist of this book was unimpressive. Finally, I think that Philip had so many unexplored layers that the author did him a disservice and he comes across as a bad parent and dislikeable character. My heart went out to him because people tend to find compassion for victims of mental health diseases, as his dead wife Marina, but hardly anyone spares a thought for those victims’ caretakers. A mental health disease such as depression takes a toll on them too, and I think this wasn’t explored as much as it could be. Yes, this is a romance but I thought that too much space was taken up by inconsequential things. This book could’ve been so much better.
The only parts I liked about this book were when Eloise’s brothers arrive to Philip’s house looking for their sister and the epilogue.
4. START A SERIES: Phoenix Unbound by Grace Draven
TW: violence, death, and rape. This is an indie author of fantasy romance that I decided to give a second chance to, and I was pleasantly surprised by The Fallen Empire’s first installment Phoenix Unbound. I particularly liked the magic system, especially the magic surrounding graveyards, barrows, and dragas but it was also nice to see how Azarion and Gilene’s enemies-to-lovers romance emerges as both of these characters grow and learn to accept who they are now, and who they will eventually become. This made them stronger as individuals, and I liked how they ultimately became even stronger together. The empress of the Fallen Empire is a very unusual character in fantasy romance too and I liked how the author didn’t shy away from describing her vileness. I Liked This Book And Will Probably Read It Again.
5. LIBRARY BOOK: The Sisters of Auschwitz by Roxane van Iperen
In this book, Roxane van Iperen sets out to tell the story and history behind her newly (in 2012) purchased home The High Nest. Located in the Dutch region ‘t Gooi along a quiet forest path, this house was a hiding place for Jews during WWII. These heroic efforts to save as many Jewish lives as possible in the Netherlands, most of whom were killed in concentration camps, were led by two Jewish sisters, Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who rented the house from two women from Amsterdam and who housed up to 25 people in hiding at a time. The sisters were eventually betrayed, arrested, and taken to Auschwitz via Westerbork. Later, they were taken to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated on April 15th, 1945.
The Germans invaded The Netherlands on May 10th, 1940, and it was the beginning of five days of fighting until Dutch troops surrendered on May 14th, 1940, and Queen Wilhelmina fled to England. But the Germans didn’t immediately target the Jewish population of The Netherlands during the occupation. First, everyone in the country had to have identity cards. Then, Jewish people had to have a “J” on their identity papers, then lists of all Jewish people in the country were collected and Jewish weren’t allowed to work in certain sectors or to go certain places. Then all Jewish people were rounded up to go work in German labor camps. Anyone who wanted to survive had to go into hiding or get a new identity.
Janny and Lien Brilleslijper quickly became involved in the underground Dutch resistance against the Nazis and the author sets out to describe this in detail. The writing is vivid and harrowing, and you can’t help but stay at the edge of your seat and see how the sisters are later betrayed and discovered. Having worked so hard against the possibility, but knowing that it was a high probability, you know that this will eventually happen and Janny and Lien see their nightmare come true one day in 1944 after Janny comes home to The High Nest after going out to buy groceries.
But after the sisters are arrested, van Iperen doesn’t shy away from describing how life in the concentration camps was, and this, in my opinion, is the most important part of the book. Rich in detail and description on the amount of death dealt by the Germans and sickness, this book is hard to read at times and I had to put it down once or twice. But the author does a superb job in describing how the sisters fought to survive and how they built a support system with other women in the camp, including Anne Frank and her sister Margot. By early 1945, it was getting harder and harder for Janny and Lien to cling to life as constant degradation and starvation was slowly killing them and freedom seemed so far away. The British 11th Armoured Division liberated the camp on April 15th, 1945.
6. FANTASY: Dragon Unleashed by Grace Draven
This is the second installment of The Fallen Empire and it is the story of caravan healer Halani and Malachus, a draga disguised as a human who is following the trail of his stolen mother-bond. While I loved the pairing and enjoyed seeing Azarion and Gilene together as a couple now, I thought that this book started out strong but then got too slow after Malachus is injured and Halani heals him. Honestly, this part of the book is a drag and it took me a lot to not DNF it. I liked the ending, but it also wasn’t one of my favorites. I will continue on with the series, but I hope the next book doesn’t take ages to get going.
That is everything I read in January. Thank you for reading. My next post will be a review for the book Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández.
