My sister and I read a lot. We like absolutely none of the same books. April loves mysteries, series, Jane Austen, and most especially anything concerning World War II.
World War II is extremely important, and I love many books concerning it. But last year we read The Book Thief on the heels of Life After Life and The Secret Keeper and I just had to have a break. Reading so many at one time makes them all swirl together in my head. And there is just a breaking point within me where the sad just cannot keep going-the Holocaust is surely the absolute worst atrocity of the modern age.
But today I pulled out my copy of Night and spent my holiday of independence reading about the horror of one boy's loss of his family, his faith, his humanity really. Night is brutal in its depiction of death, of terror. That human beings are capable of such brutality is one of the scariest of thoughts, and we really do require constant reminders of exactly how inhumane people can become when they begin to think of anyone as "other."
It has been a very long weekend of reading and movies for me. I hope that someday I look back on this time in my life-this time of such aloneness-and feel that I spent it wisely. Everything that I do anymore, from morning until night, is in an attempt to become a better person. I suppose if we dug down deeply into that we would discover my belief that somehow I can fix whatever was so wrong with me that the person who was supposed to love me forever decided that fifteen years was enough. But, at the same time, becoming a better person is surely also a noble endeavor. So we will hope that I am going about this healing correctly.
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