I can honesty say that this is not a book I would have picked up if I had been in a bookstore.

Carlson book was part of the selection for this month’s My Book Box.

It is actually pretty good once it gets going. The first couple chapters were a bit slow, but once Carlson decides that he wants to open the diner the book does take off.

The success of the memoir is Carlson’s voice and his willingness to not try to disguise the fact that sometime he is an idiot. He is just as messed up as you are. He is a dreamer but he is a mess. And that is great.

The book will make you want to eat pancakes after reading. It will also make you want to visit Paris, but most likely, will not want to make you open a business in Paris. (Though it does bring a whole other level of understanding to an Asterix book) Carlson’s memoir does cover the period after 9/11 and the infamous Freedom Fries debacle.

Thank you, to My Book Box because otherwise I would not have read this charming memoir.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

                As I start to write this review, the Internet is somewhat imploding because of a comic book.  No, the character didn’t come out as guy, and no I don’t really want to talk about because it is dumb.  But then you sit and think, and you have to wonder if some people never read books like this one.

                Today, you would think everyone knows about the Holocaust and that we pretty much don’t have to educate people about it.  And then you get smacked in the face by, to use polite langue, idiots.  You have Holocaust Denials.  You have idiots who know there was a Holocaust but think it was one the Jews were killing everyone.  You have comparisons of people like Obama to Hitler.  You just have to wonder about what people are learning about history that even in the modern world where information about the Holocaust is readily available in a wide variety of sources, why people are so filled with stupidity.

                Leitner’s memoir isn’t so much a memoir in the traditional sense of the word.  If you have read Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and After, Leitner’s work is much like that memoir.  It is more of conveying of memoir.  While Leitner isn’t as poetic as Delbo, her book is just as compelling.  In part, this is because Delbo was imprisoned because her involvement with the Resistance, and Leitner was Jewish.

  Leitner’s memoir starts with the deportment from the Ghetto and follows her experiences during the war.  The free form and very short chapters in which the story is told make it all the more compelling because there is a sense of pain that is viscerally felt by the reader.  Leitner conveys more in simple words than other writers do.  It is this aspect of the book that makes this volume essential reading.  The sense of pain is even given more recent context in the afterword by Leitner’s husband.

Maybe if this book was assigned more we would not have to deal with idiots.

This is just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful in places. This is Teffi's account of her journey out of Revolutionary Russia. It has beauty, humor, and sorrow.

Thank NYRB Book Club, thank you.

(May 2016 selection)

I hadn't heard of Eleanor Perenyi before this book was selected by NYRB for its Feb. selection for the book of the month.

At a very young age, Perenyi made a Hungarian Baron and goes to live on his rather improvised estate.  It is an unlikely marriage, but works until world wide events happen, in particular the outbreak of World War II.

The selling point of the book is Perenyi's tone which is gossipy and chatty.   It also captures a place and time that are long gone.

While it is possible to read this book prior to reading Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, I would recommend reading Dreams first.

This book looks at the idea of the harem from the Western male view, something which confuses Mernissi because her view of the harem is radically different (and more accurate). Her conclusions, in particular in regards to what a Western is, are interesting.