The Pianist, by Wladyslaw Szpilman, is this month's book. {The full title is actually "The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945" ... but who honestly wants that as a post title?} It's a memoir, which is sorta-new to us and should be awesome. It is Bonnie's pick, it has had FANTASTIC reviews, and really- it looks phenomenal!Here is an Editorial Review I found on Amazon:
Written immediately after the end of World War II, this morally complex Holocaust memoir is notable for its exact depiction of the grim details of life in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation. "Things you hardly noticed before took on enormous significance: a comfortable, solid armchair, the soothing look of a white-tiled stove," writes Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist for Polish radio when the Germans invaded. His mother's insistence on laying the table with clean linen for their midday meal, even as conditions for Jews worsened daily, makes palpable the Holocaust's abstract horror. Arbitrarily removed from the transport that took his family to certain death, Szpilman does not deny the "animal fear" that led him to seize this chance for escape, nor does he cheapen his emotions by belaboring them. Yet his cool prose contains plenty of biting rage, mostly buried in scathing asides (a Jewish doctor spared consignment to "the most wonderful of all gas chambers," for example). Szpilman found compassion in unlikely people, including a German officer who brought food and warm clothing to his hiding place during the war's last days. Extracts from the officer's wartime diary (added to this new edition), with their expressions of outrage at his fellow soldiers' behavior, remind us to be wary of general condemnation of any group. --Wendy Smith
Yeah. I know! Stop drooling and go get it, then! ;)
The L. library has 2 copies {I've got one}. The N.L. library has one. And Amazon has them for as low as 38 cents.
We'll be meeting at my "new" house {slash Bonnie's in-law's} on Thursday, June 11th @ 6:30pm. Bonnie also has hook-ups to an edited version of the movie and will have it there if anyone wants to watch it afterward. Woohoo! I'm pumped already. So go get the book, then sit out in your yard and read. Ah... summer!
