The Greatest Magazine - EVER.

Usually I am not a person who reads magazines. I find them frivilous and bad for the environment to boot, but recently a friend turned me on to a magazine that is simply a MUST for book lovers everywhere. It's called Bookmarks and it is just amazing. They do book reviews, cultural articles, history, bookclub reviews and so much more.

Every book that you have ever considered reading has probably been reviewed in this magazine. It is a collection of articles specifically for book lovers. I love my subscription so much that I back ordered many of their catalogs. I know I will wait with baited breath every two months and when my bookmarks finally comes, I will be like a kid on Christmas morning. If you love good books, do yourself a favor... visit Bookmarks Magazine and check it out. You will be glad that you did.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville

This was our book club selection for the month of May. We wanted to do something with a mother -daughter theme. This is the true story of Amy Dickinson and her daughter, Emily. Amy Dickinson is the advice columnist who eventually replaced Ann Landers.

This is a quirky, funny and sometimes sad look at their life from the perspective of some years. I found the relationships between mother and daughter, but also between the two of them and the women of their extended family to be very uplifting. These relationships were uplifting, humorous, supportive, and loving - everything that women should be for one another.

Her opinion of men was slightly flawed by the relationships in her own life. Although in the end, she has a healthy perspective on the traumas and occasionally the disappointments of her own life. I like her ideas on "failing up" - bad things happen to open us up for something better. That is something that I have experienced for my own self and honestly, I think everyone probably has.

I was glad that we chose this for our bookclub and I enjoyed reading it.

The Nazi Officers Wife

This book was the true story of Edith Hahn. Edith was a "U-boat" in Nazi Berlin during the worst years of the war. A "U-boat" in this sense is a person of Jewish descent who was posing as a person of Aryan descent.
Edith, calling herself Grete, survives a work camp only to find upon her return to Vienna, that most of her family and friends have been lost. She finds help and assumes another identity, going to work for the Red Cross in Berlin.
She meets and falls in love with Werner Vetter, a Nazi officer. This book is Edith's story of survival. It's amazing and compelling. If you read any history at all, this book is a must.