Red’s Book Reviews: We Were the Lucky Ones by Gloria Hunter

I have to be honest I spent so much of this book thinking about the line in the Beatles song “A Day In the Life,” that states “A crowd of people turned away, but I just had to look, having read the book.” This compelling account of a Jewish family in Poland during World War II just creates that feeling in reverse. We’ve all seen the “movie” of this story. The plight of Jewish people under the Nazis and even those under Stalin in Russia is well-documented, so when you read a story like this that provides real characters and narratives it’s easy to be scared to turn the page because the fact is that the stories didn’t end happy for most Jews in this time and place. This is a remarkably well-researched and well-told story, and I’d recommend this to anyone to read.

Up Next: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Red’s Book Reviews: The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

The Know-It-All details Jacobs’ educational endeavor of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from start to finish. His narrative takes us through the alphabet while relating entries to his own life. He takes up the challenge to recapture the confidence he had as a ten-year-old who felt he was the smartest boy in the world along with conquering a task that his father failed to complete. He has always been intellectually competitive with his father, a lawyer who has a number degrees and written numerous books on law. Driving the story is the pursuit of intelligence, the definition of intelligence, and the way knowledge shapes the relationships each of us make.

I admire the dedication this took, but I won’t lie that at times I felt like the narrative and its lessons were done a bit heavy-handedly. While I am a fan of creative non-fiction, I always grow somewhat uncomfortable with books like this because I spend a lot of the time wondering how much of the writer’s goal was shaped by the idea that he’s going to write about it later. Once that enters my mind, it’s hard to forget, making some of the neat connections between entries and his life seem less genuine because he created the connection to fit his narrative. Still, it’s a fun read and I recommend giving it a chance.

Up next: We Were the Lucky Ones by Gloria Hunter