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 July. I know I am a little behind on my monthly wrap-ups, but July and August have both been very slow reading months for me. Life got in the way and I am only just now trying to catch up. Also, I tried to read very long books these past two months and that has prevented me from reading as many books as I usually do. So this is going to be a short one. Here is what I read in July:
1. MYSTERY: The Burning by Jane Casey
If someone were to ask me “what’s your favorite TV show genre?” I’d say, “police dramas and procedurals” right off the bat. I’ve watched most of them. But, for some reason, procedural novels, which is what this is (with a tinge of mystery), don’t hold the same allure for me. And Jane Casey’s debut novel The Burning is no exception. In fact, I can think of only one mystery series (the Sano Ichiro series by Laura Joh Rowland) that I loved enough to binge read the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, I thought this book was a good debut novel and a solid first book of a series. It introduces the main character, and she is likeable and easy to connect with (I mean, who hasn’t dated the wrong guy before and/or avoided coming home after work so as not to face a bad and deteriorating situation?) But I didn’t love it. In the end, I couldn’t help feeling it was too formulaic and obvious. Although I did think that the author did a superb job with the antagonist. The killer, in my opinion, is the best written character of the entire novel. I haven’t decided whether I will continue this series or not yet though. We’ll see.
2. HISTORY: The Hitler Years: Triumph, 1933-1939 and The Hitler Years: Disaster, 1940-1945
This series is a chronological historical account of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and eventual downfall in 1945. Beginning by relating the political circumstances that led to Hitler being elected chancellor of Germany in 1933, Frank McDonough separates his chapters by years—from 1933 to 1939 in the first volume, which ends with the German invasion of Poland and from 1940 to 1945 in the second volume—and portrays the Fuhrer as a skilled politician that knew how to take advantage of a political situation—either good or bad for Germany—and make the most of it for the betterment of Germany and the Aryan race. His aim, once in power, was twofold: to eradicate Jewry and the Jews, and to increase the living space of the German people. The first led to the death of millions of Jews and the Holocaust while the second to Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941. Operation Barbarossa, as this military invasion is known, occurred after the German Army had already annexed Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Northern France, and Poland to its territory. But Operation Barbarossa would be the first German invasion to cost German lives.
Operation Barbarossa would also be one of Germany’s most significant losses. And the one in which Hitler would start questioning the loyalty of his generals and then his own decisions. It is also the one military invasion of Germany that would lead to the creation of the Great Alliance, formed by England, the United States, and Russia— and the eventual defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
I’ve stated before that I was not (at that time) an avid reader of WWII history despite the fact that I tended to read a lot of history, both in fiction and nonfiction. However, that has since changed and it changed because I realized that the Great War and the People’s War are significant periods in the life of contemporary men. WWI occurred more than 100 years ago and WWII 84 years ago, so a lot of people who lived through them are gone and those alive today are losing consciousness of why the two world wars occurred and I think it’s important not to lose that. So I started reading more about them. And this series is a good place to start for anyone interested in a general and chronological account of WWII. I thought it was a good introduction for the non-specialist and I recommend it to anyone wanting to read more about Hitler and the events in history he was involved in.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading.
