I listened to this book over the course of three-ish days, and my fitbit tells me that one of those days I only slept 4 and a half hours, which is because I was hella engrossed in the story and stayed up Way Too Late. So maybe if you start reading this, start it at the beginning of your weekend so that if/when it sucks you in, you won't be shooting yourself in the foot quite so thoroughly as I did when I slept so little on a Tuesday night.
So! We have Juliet who is an author and WWII has recently ended and she is doing a book tour. Things are going well for her! It's nice. She gets a letter from someone who lives on Guernsey, which is an island in the English channel that was occupied by the Nazis during WWII and was totally cut off from communication with the outside world, but now some books that Juliet used to own have made their way to the island and her name and address is in them and she is getting letters from peeps on the island about books. It's still nice! More things happen, largely nice, but I will admit that I had to pause the audiobook for a bit because I couldn't concentrate on it through my tears. My susceptibility to crying may or may not have been influenced by the lateness of the hour.
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| a good book AND a good cry |
For someone who has read as much as I have about World War Two, I was astonished that I knew NOTHING about Guernsey and its occupation. Nothing! How!? Apparently I have more reading to do.
The book is written as a series of letters and telegrams and etc! I'm always game for a good epistolary novel. After I read this one I read Where'd You Go Bernadette and I am there for this structure/device, if you have a recommendation, sock it to me.
p.s. highly recommend you google Guernsey because it is way more lovely-looking than I thought it would be.
I have heard good things about this book for awhile but also WWII books aren't really something that gets me super excited. Also the tears thing. Books that I know will make me cry are hard to pick up
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit different from other WWII books in that it's focused on the one place post-war. It's kinda like 84 Charing Cross Road in its general vibe.
DeleteI didn't know the tears were going to come so I was sitting on my bed sobbing and saying "I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS"
I hearrrrrrt this book. I know that I fell prey to that thing Alice talks about where you get extra fond of books with the message of "WHO ARE THE BEST PEOPLE BOOK PEOPLE ARE THE BEST PEOPLE" -- but, also, I think this book is just super lovely in all respects. It makes me chuckle and also cry many tears.
ReplyDeleteHahaha, the whole "BOOK PEOPLLLLEEEE" thing! I admit, I fall prey to it sometimes. But then in the books she's dissing some guy for maybe shelving his books in alphabetical order and I was like, "um, excuse me, classification systems and logical shelving methods are of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE, how dare u"
DeleteON THE WHOLE THOUGH, it was a Very Nice Book.