Diary of a Young Girl

Well, I finally did it! I read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. It was a very compelling read but I must say that there were times at the beginning when I found Anne’s teen attitude to be grating. I know that most people go through this period in their life but that didn’t make many of her criticisms any less grating. But as I read I found myself liking Anne more and identifying some of myself in her. I must say that towards the end I got more and more upset, knowing what eventually happened to the people in the annex made me feel worse about how hopeful they were about the invasion. Reading the afterword and seeing just how close they came to getting through the occupation made it that much worse. I’m glad I read it, and glad for the insights it gave me.

I have never read that much in relation to World War II, in fact only a handful of fiction books come to mind (Number the Stars, Escape from Krakow, A Boy No More, and.... those are really all that come to mind.) But I have several in my legion of to-read books so some day I'll round it out a bit more.