It's NZ Book Month!

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

― Dr. Seuss

 

Guess what! Not only is March the beginning of my favourite season - autumn! But, it's also New Zealand Book Month - a whole month dedicated to books! Yes it's a tad nerdy to be excited about book month, but hell, I am a nerd when it comes to books, you learn to love it.

So I hope Dr Seuss, my favourite childhood author (I still have a very battered copy of The Lorax on my book shelf) has provided you with some inspiration, and you can look forward to some more in the coming weeks as I share with you more quotes from my favourite authors.

And here is my Top Five list of books I think you should read this month because they're really quite good.

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

A warning before you start reading this one: Put aside a couple of years because this is a seven-book series and once you get halfway through Cross Stitch, Jamie and Claire Fraser will rule your life.

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon--when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach - an "outlander" - in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in 1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire, and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. Link

Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Even if you have seen the movie, I still highly recommend you read Water for Elephants. The movie does the book very proud, but misses out a bit of detail - even some of the characters. It's one of the best books I have ever read.

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski is tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It is the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And Rosie, an untrainable elephant who is the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grows among this unlikely trio is one of love and trust, and, ultimately, their only hope for survival. Link

Goodbye Sarajevo, by Atka Reid and Hana Schofield

It is very hard to wrap your head around the fact that this is a true story, every word. But it's brilliant, and a poignant reminder that no matter how hard things get here in New Zealand with natural disasters and the up-and-down economy, we are one of the luckiest countries in the world to have been spared from war.

May, 1992. Hana is twelve years old when she is put on one of the last UN evacuation buses fleeing the besieged city of Sarajevo. Her twenty-one-year-old sister, Atka staying behind to look after their five younger siblings, is there to say goodbye. Thinking that they will be apart for only a few weeks, they make a promise to each other to be brave.

But as the Bosnian war escalates and months go by without contact; their promise to each other becomes deeply significant. Hana is forced to cope as a refugee in Croatia, far away from home and family, while Atka battles for survival in a city where snipers, mortar attacks and desperate food shortages are a part of everyday life. Their mother, working for a humanitarian organization, is unable to reach them and their father retreats inside himself, desperately shocked by what is happening to his city.

But when Atka finds work as a translator in an old smoky radio station, and then with Andrew, a photojournalist from New Zealand, life takes an unexpected turn, and the remarkable events that follow change her life, and those of her family forever. Link

One Day, by David Nicholls

Although it didn't blow my mind at first like I thought it would, being a bestseller and all, it grew on me. The thing I loved about it was how it focussed on the unique friendship between a guy and a girl more than a tear-jerking love story. Having male friends myself who I love to pieces I had many "that's totally us" moments while reading One Day.

15th July 1988. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year which follows?

One Day is a funny/sad love story spanning twenty years, a book about growing up – how we change, how we stay the same. Link

The Bronze Horseman, by Paullina Simons

It's the beginning of another series, but rest assured this one is only three books long - three long books you will struggle to put down. It is an incredible story of human courage, survival and finding love is the midst of World War II when the world felt like it was coming to an end in Leningrad, Russia.

Leningrad 1941: Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. It is a hard, impoverished life, yet the Metanovs know many who are not as fortunate as they.

The family routine is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. On that fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young officer named Alexander.

Tatiana and her family suffer as Hitler’s army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love. It is a love that could tear Tatiana’s family apart, a love that carries a secret that could mean death for anyone who hears it.

Confronted on the one hand by Hitler’s unstoppable war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world. Link

http://nzbookmonth.co.nz/

Goodbye Sarajevo review (spoiler alert)

When I turned the last page of Goodbye Sarajevo last week, I breathed a sigh of relief, but not because I was glad the book was over – I didn’t want it to end. I was relieved that I live in such a beautiful, spacious, and war-free country.

Goodbye Sarajevo is the true story of two sisters, Atka and Hana, who were torn apart by the Bosnian war in 1992 during the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare, and reunited in New Zealand by the extraordinary kindness of a kiwi family.
In May 1992, 12-year-old Hana was put on one of the last UN evacuation buses fleeing the city, while Atka, 21, was left behind in war-torn Sarajevo to look after their five younger siblings as their mother, working for a humanitarian aid organisation, was unable to reach them while their father retreated inside himself, shocked at what was happening to his city.
Amazingly, the entire family of 12 survived and later settled in New Zealand with the help of Atka’s husband Andrew Reid – whom she met during the war when he worked as a photojournalist – and his family.
The language and the pace of the book was absolutely perfect – not once did I get bored, which is rare for me, and the two different points of view really brought the story together in a way that lets the reader explore these two very different aspects of war – life in a war zone and life as a refugee.
I admired Atka for her courage in the way she did everything she could to keep her family alive and together, despite suffering from malnourishment, kidney stones, and an ill baby during the years of the war, and the raw emotion of Hana’s story balanced with her childlike positivity tore at my heartstrings through chapters that were almost like diary entries.
One thing I would have liked to have seen was a run-down of what everyone in that family of 12 is up to now, but who knows, there may be another book in the future.
I had the pleasure of meeting Atka and Hana earlier this year when I interviewed them about their book, and the thing that struck me most about them was their positivity towards life and the way they have created extremely successful lives for themselves, despite the pain they have been through which still shows in their eyes when they talk about it.
Atka worked as a journalist in Christchurch upon her arrival in New Zealand and later gained a Diploma in Graphic Design. Hana graduated from the university of Canterbury in 2002 with first class honours in law and a bachelor’s degree in Russian, and has since worked as a lawyer for a leading New Zealand law firm and, more recently, for a city law firm in London.
Just goes to show that there’s no excuse for not making the most out of your life – even if you’ve been to hell and back.

Goodbye Sarajevo

As you probably know, I'm a journalist, and in Masterton, where I live and work, we have this awesome bookstore called Hedley's Booksellers, which has been there for over 100 years. David Hedley, the owner, always lets us know about authors coming to town, as they get a lot of them because he's really passionate about what he does and always pushes to get these great authors into the store. So at the Wairarapa Times-Age, I'm the "author interviewer", simply because nobody else is really interested and I obviously LOVE books.

My latest interview was with Atka Reid and Hana Schofield, survivors of the Bosnian war, and was so, so interesting - authors are all so lovely.

The story is here on the Wairarapa Times-Age website.

I'm also reading the book myself - David gave me a reading copy to help with my story, but he hasn't asked for it back yet and I'm hooked after the first chapter, so I'm going to keep reading until he asks for it back... so watch this space for a review.