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 March. This month I only read 3 books because I finally completed War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, a book I started in January and which I’d been meaning to read since college.
1. NONFICTION: Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days that Changed the World by Chris Wallace
I read this book because I read Hiroshima by John Hersey in February and I wanted to know why the President of the United States decided to use the atomic bomb as a means to defeat the Japanese, what was going on the days before the it was dropped, the people involved, and all that but this book was not what I expected. Yes, it talks about all this but not in the depth I was looking for. Given that the author is a journalist, it’s understandable that his writing style is that of a journalist, but I didn’t care for it much. He relates the events that happened, yes, but there’s no depth to his approach and I quickly found myself bored with the book entirely. I didn’t DNF it because I was already too far into it and I decided to go ahead and finish it but I didn’t like it.
2. CLASSIC: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Broadly speaking, War and Peace is about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812, the battle of Borodino, the bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic Wars and which allowed the French to occupy Moscow, and the eventual defeat of Napoleon and his army. The book, however, begins in 1805 and it introduces us to a vast array of characters as well as relate the events leading up to the first encounter between Napoleon and Kutuzov during the equally famous Battle of Austerlitz.
Pierre Bezukov, Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky are the protagonists of the book, and we see each one of them grow and find happiness as part of their character development, but I admit that I had to put this book down several times because both Pierre and Andrei are severely depressed in various parts of the book (and spend most of it in that state of mood) that it started to affect my own mood. Other parts I just didn’t like as much, and it was hard to get past them. But I understand now why this is such an important book, and why it has had the impact it has had for several generations. I didn’t know, for example, that soldiers used to read this book in the trenches during WWII and that at times it was the only book they would carry, even more so than the Bible.
I recommend this book nonetheless and will probably read it again later. I will probably read another translation as well.
3. HISTORICAL FICTION: Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
This book is also one of those that turned out to be something else than what I expected. It’s not a bad book though, but I still had a hard time getting into it. This is the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” only to find that their new life in America isn’t what they were told it would be. Each chapter is a different period in these women’s lives, e.g., their arduous journey from Japan to San Francisco, their first night as new wives, their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, and the author does a very good job at portraying these women living a life that will eventually place them in a juncture where they no longer know who they are and who they owe their loyalty to, Japan or America.
What I didn’t like about this book is that we never get close to any of the characters and experience any of these women’s lives with them. I get, however, that the practical anonymity of these women is on purpose and that each one represents the lives of every woman that has been in this position in the past and will be in the future (as Japanese and American relations will deteriorate during and after WWII). I however couldn’t connect with any of these women, and it was hard for me to finish the book. Still, I recommend the book to anyone interested in these kind of books but I doubt that I’ll be reading it again.
