That's Really What He's Like? (52 Weeks of Books Challenge Week Five)

No preamble today - straight to the review!

Hitler, Vol. 1: 1889-1936 Hubris

Ian Kershaw, 1998, W.W. Norton & Company

Find it where I found it: Amazon.com Link

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Summary:

Hitler, Vol.1: 1889-1936 Hubris is the first of two volumes about the life of German Chancellor and eventual dictator Adolf Hitler, written by British historian Ian Kershaw. This first volume explores his life from the time he was born until the remilitarization of the Rhineland (an area Germany had been forced to demilitarize as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919) in early 1936.

Why I Read It:

I've got a thing for history. I've had a thing for German history since I was a kid, and a thing for the time period between World War I and World War II since college. If you need any indication for how much of a thing it is - I did an independent study on it. This was one of the books I picked up to read as part of that independent study, but didn't get through before the end of the semester.

Opinion:

When history is your major in college, you read a lot of things written by historians, and write a few things yourself. What you find out quickly is how dense the writing is, and how quickly you have to learn the art of skimming if you want to get the reading done in time for class. Because this biography is so comprehensive (it's been split into two volumes, and the first volume is 591 pages before the end notes and appendices), and the topic is so much to take in, I took an extra week to finish reading it.

Before that last paragraph scares you off - this was soooo worth the time, in my opinion. Yeah, Hitler, Vol. 1 is long and comprehensive, but the language Kershaw uses is generally easy to understand, and active and engaging in the topic. His expertise is German social history in the 20th century, and both his knowledge and his passion for sharing what he knows bleed through the pages. The second volume is also sitting on my bookshelf, and while I may not get to the second volume until the end of this year or beginning of next year, I will not be skipping it.

Conclusion:

It was interesting to be reading this particular book at this particular moment in history. So much has been happening so fast, and so many people have things to say - polarizingly positive and negative. I was in the middle of reading this biography when a friend posted a link to an article about how our current president is not just like Hitler (points of which I both agreed and disagreed). I finished the book with a better perspective, I think, on what happened then versus what is happening in the USA now - which is why I firmly believe it is so important that we do not lose sight of what has happened in the past. It's one way we can recognize what is going on in the world and maybe, maybe see things go differently.

My Writer's Toolbox: Thesauruses I Love

I don't know about the rest of you writers in the crowd, but there are times when I struggle to get the right words to come out onto the page. The debate over using thesauruses amongst authors can be fierce. My personal opinion is that there is definitely a place and time to use them (they've saved me from missing deadlines on a few occasions), so long as a writer is careful not to overuse them. Because I do consider them an essential in my writer's toolbox of resources, I thought I would share the ones I make the most use out of and where you can find them. 1. Webster's New World Thesaurus (credit: @catpollockwrites IG, posted 8/24/2017 ) When you were in grade school, did your teachers ever hand out those monthly or bimonthly Scholastic book catalogs with all the age-appropriate books coming out that they wanted you to buy? That, my friends, is how I got a hold of my thesaurus. It's almost like mid-thirties me traveled back in time and whispered int

Metaphors: Candles

I've recently fallen in love with candles. Since coming home from the World Race , I've bought at least one a month. My favorite candles are the ones that come in glass jars - because when they burn out, I can clean the remaining wax out and put the jars to other uses. Right now, that means they get cleaned out and packed away in anticipation of my move to Flagstaff. But as I was lighting one tonight (vanilla spice... Thanksgiving smells? Yes, please!), I saw a metaphor for writing flickering away in the flame licking at the wick and melting the wax. I suppose it could be a metaphor for life in general, but since the theme of this blog is writing... Well, you do the math.

[Five Minute Friday] Purpose

Fiber bars, strewn along the side of the road. There had to be at least a dozen of them, still in their wrappers and completely unopened. No box in sight. Really? That's about the reaction my younger sister and I had when we stumbled on them on our early morning run. Really? along with disgusted sighs about the wastefulness of it. These were the expensive ones, not a generic store brand that kind of tastes and kind of looks the same sometimes. So, when we weren't keeping an eye out for their box, we speculated about what had happened. And wondered how many more we were going to see before the end of our run. "Maybe they took one bite and thought they were gross," my sister said. "So they threw them out because they didn't want them anymore." I let out one of those disgusted sighs and nodded along with her theory. "Yeah, or they got in a huge fight, and threw them out in a fit of rage." "That's a possibility." And

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