I confess.

Spindle's End
- Robin McKinley

I confess! It was I, I did it. I planned it, acted on it and enjoyed it. I'm glad, glad, glad I did it and if I had my time again I would still do it.
I listen to Audio Books.

When I was very small I relied on my sisters to read books to me but once I could read alone I did it with gusto. In my prime I would read six to seven books a week. Along came uni and the number dropped to one or two and then the final destroyer of free time- work- arrived and the number of books I read dropped again. I come home from work tired and busy and visits to the library are far and few between but how can I desert books? Thus began my discovery of audio books.

I spend at least an hour in travel time every day and then have menial tasks at home and I can listen to books during this time using the brilliant skill of multitasking. I still read books with my eyes looking at printed words but many of the recent books I have come across have been audio books. I am sure there are many highbrow people out there who would feel that I can no longer claim to read these books. They might say because I only listen to them I only experience them in a lesser way. It means I don't have to struggle with reading hard to pronounce names or face the peril of crushing in my face when reading a heavy book lying down. However, I say to my critics, I still learn the entire story and come to grasp with concepts and characters. I will take a stand and wave my placard high!  Listening to books is far better than not going near a book and is a valid and worthwhile use of time. To me all fellow time-poor book enthusiasts!

I have come around in a full circle and once again I have people reading to me.


Spindle's End

Guess what fairy tale this is a retelling of? Sleeping Beauty. Robin McKinley added a lot to this simple story. When she was finished with it, it was no longer a pretty little tale but a lengthy, background information stuffed, complex novel.

The story begins at the birth of Sleeping Beauty. Her parents neglect to ask the evil fairy to the name day event but this fairy of evilness is not put off by the lack of an invitation. The wicked fairy Pernicia arrives bent on a hideous revenge. Pernicia cackles appropriately and curses the Princess to a deathly sleep brought on by the prick of spindle's end on the day of her 21st birthday. All living creatures, humans, animals, and living houses (yes, living houses) are horrified. The Princess must be saved!

To protect the life of the princess a plan is concocted and she is spirited away by a young, ordinary, country fairy called Katriona. On this difficult journey Katriona is helped by many different animals and this is the beginning of a deep life-long friendship the princess has with all animals. The location of the princess is kept a secret even from her parents and her elaborate name 'Casta Albinia Allegra Dove Minerva Fidelia Aletta Blythe Domina Delicia Aurelia Grace Isabel Griselda Gwyneth Pearl Ruby Coral Lily Iris Briar-Rose' is changed to Rosie (what one name would you pick from this list?). The plan is that the longer Rosie is hidden the less chance there will be that Pernicia can harm her. However the closer it gets to her 21st birthday the harder it will be to hide her from Pernicia's spell. Time passes and Rosie grows up about as un-princess like as possible. She is far too tall, she wears her hair short and she works as a  horse leach, caring for animals in the muck and mess of a blacksmith's shop.

Rosie does not know her true identity and she never dreams she could have a secret life outside of the small village where she lives. Her aspirations are that the introverted and grumpy blacksmith will finally notice her as a woman and they will live happily ever after. Rosie see herself as a clumsy, useful type of girl not at all interested in dresses or ceremony. All of this is thrown into confusion for Rosie when a stranger turns up on the doorstep only a few months before her 21st birthday. The stranger is a high ranking fairy and he has just discovered where Rosie lives (a male fairy, what?). He knows that if he has discovered the location of Rosie then Pernicia could easily do the same.

Pernicia filled with rage and revenge bares down on Rosie and Rosie is forced to take on her roll of princess-protector for the first time in her life. She has the help of her human and animal friends as well as a jolly old living castle but Rosie is unsure that she even wants the life that success over Pernicia will bring her. 

It is clear to see that Robin McKinley is very imaginative, She breaks up the original story of sleeping beauty and then stitches it up differently giving much scope for new perspectives and building extra characters. However there is such a vast amount of exposition and history that this book drags out to be a lengthy story. Mckinley at times seems to get so lost in threshing out side details that it comes as a shock when the actual story begins again and there is some action. Spindle's End entertained me enough as I drove and did cooking but I will not be shouting it's praise from the rooftops. 

"People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were." - Robin McKinley

When Jays fly to Barbmo

When Jays Fly to Barbmo

- Margaret Balderson

Book Three - Twelve books about WW2

The time is 1940, the location is a remote island in northern Norway and the protagonist is Ingeborg a teenage girl who has to make some big decisions. 

In early 1940, Norway was not yet involved in World War 2 and many Norwegians hoped that they would continue to remain uninvolved. Switzerland had claimed neutrality, Norway would claim it as well. While so many other countries had been secretly or not secretly building and fortifying their armed forces Norway was running late and had remained relatively unprepared. In fact when Germany swiftly and silently invaded Norway on the 9th of April (exactly 74 years to the day that I am writing this!), Norway did not even have a standing army. What Norway did have though was cities with harbors that didn't freeze in winter and when both the Allied and German forces wanted control over iron ore resources and and transport in the Baltic sea, Norway became an important playing piece in the war. 

Now to the story!

Ingeborg lives with her father Arne, her father's sister Anne-Sigri and an old friend of her father's called the Wood Troll. Just before this book begins, Ingeborg ran away from the small city boarding school because she missed her home and her father. However, now she is where she wanted to be, Ingeborg feels closed in and she is knows that the family has secrets. No one will talk to her about her mother who died in childbirth, her aunt adores her father but he can barely stand the sight of her, and Ingeborg wishes the Wood Troll would be more open and stop talking in riddles. 

In northern Norway where Ingeborg lives there are months on end of darkness during the winter. Ingeborg loves the arctic air, the brooding mountains and the deep blanket of snow but she also feels the 'dark sickness' when the endless night causes her to feel restless and scatty. 

Not long after the invasion Ingeborg's father is killed by Germans as he tries to help some Norwegian soldiers escape in his boat. The small family is distraught and Ingeborg demands the Wood Troll tell her about her mother. He finally complies. Her mother, Susanna, was a Lappish girl, the native wanderers of Norway. Susanna had married happily, but her natural wanderlust had made her feel trapped at the farm and her relaxed ways had created tension between her and Anne-Sigri. Days before she was to give birth to Ingeborg, Susanna was suffering from dark sickness and she made for the hills desperately wanting to be free. Arne was away on a fishing trip and by the time Susanna was found she was dead but Ingeborg, miraculously, was alive. Arne in despair blamed Anne-Sigri for Susanna's death.

Finally understanding her true identity, Ingeborg feels strongly that she wants to follow her mother's last journey. If she leaves she will have the free, exciting life she has always dreamt about. However, leaving will also mean turning her back on the dangers facing her community, on the Wood Troll who Ingeborg discovers is Jewish and her friend Viekko who is attempting to hide from the Germans so he won't be forced into service. 

While much of this book is focused on Ingeborg discovering her Lappish heritage and working out what she really wants for herself there is another theme. This other theme show the various reactions made by groups and individuals about the war. The Norwegians try to avoid it, the Lapps ignore it and Ingeborg's father faces it. The word "Barbmo" in the title refers to that place over the horizon that birds fly to at the start of winter. The Jay bird customarily stays throughout winter. In this novel, Ingeborg must decide if she will fly to safe Barbmo or stay and face out the winter.

"I am so heartily sick of not knowing who or what I am, I said."

This book would be in my top 20. 

Behold the "Charise Seal of Approval"!

A Child of Hitler

A Child of Hitler - Germany in the days when God wore a Swastika

- Alfons Heck

Book Two - Twelve book about WW2

This is a fascinating book and I think it needs to be a widely read book. If it is it not on high school and uni reading lists it should be.

Alfons Heck, the author of this book, was a teenager and member of the Hitler Youth in Germany during World War 2. War changes people and forces to them grow up fast and this is accurate for Alfons. Today, modern teenagers may spend their free time in packs of like minded school friends loitering in shopping centers or being car pooled to sporting events. In 1945, sixteen year old Heck had risen rapidly in the Hitler Youth to the rank of Gefolgschaftsfuhrer - an equal rank to an U.S Army or British Army Captain- and was in in command of nearly 2,800 boys and 80 girls in defensive duty on the Siegfried Line. This was unusual, not however for the reason that springs to mind. It was unusual because sixteen year old Gefolgschaftsfuhrers - which were not uncommon- usually were in command of only a measly unit of  800 boys. This mind boggling rank and command system was present because of two main reasons. Firstly, due to the horrendous loss of life suffered  by the German army. The army was running out of men and determined not to surrender they dipped into the youth of Germany recruiting boys as young as twelve years old. The second reason is that the members of the Hitler Youth had been schooled and indoctrinated in the ideologies of Nazism from the age of five and six. This resulted in the Hitler Youth being one of the most fanatic groups in Nazi Germany and they were desperate to fight in the war, even as defeat grew near. Many choose suicide over the thought of living in a world were their leader and hero, Hitler was not in command.

Whether or not these child soldiers should be held accountable for their actions is one of the key themes of this book. Currently the age of criminal responsibility ranges in age between 10 to 12  in different western countries. The idea is that a child under 10 does not have the mature capability to commit a serious crime and they cannot be charged with one. The members of the Hitler Youth were older than 10 but was the weight of their tainted education and the national intoxication of Hitler too much for them realise the true consequences of their actions? Did they even know the whole picture? Heck writes about his horror and shock when at the end of the war he was finally convinced that concentration camps had actually existed. In this book Heck writes that he and the boys relished their power and supremacy and they had believed in the master race. However, as he learnt the truth of what had happened during the war he felt deep anger and resentment to his elders who he felt deceived and delivered their children into a lie.

If you want to read a book that will make you feel as if you were with the Hitler Youth on their rallies, during training and when they faced active war, this is the book for you. Heck paints a very vivid picture of his experiences and since they are his own experiences the truth of what really happened to thousands of German children and teenagers thuds home.

"Tragically, now, we are the other part of the Holocaust, the generation burdened with the enormity of Auschwitz. That is our life sentence, for we became the enthusiastic victims of our Fuhrer."

Alfons Heck became an American citizen and toured the for nine years with Helen Waterford, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. Together they gave talks to thousands of  people on their different perspectives and experiences of the Nazi era.

The Seventy-Four Rabbits

Rose under fire

– Elizabeth Wein

World War 2 was absolutely a ‘world’ war because of how it affected such a vast number of countries and people. I find that growing up in the British Commonwealth; I have understandably known much more about the British viewpoint and how it affected the British and Australian forces. World War Two caused many different reactions and consequences in other countries though and so to broaden my perspective, for the next twelve weeks I am going to read twelve books that focus on some different parts and attitudes of the war. I am going to be focusing on the war in Europe rather than in Africa, the east or at sea because it would already take me a life time to read through everything that has been written about the European side of the war!

               

Book One - Twelve books about WW2

Rose Justice is an 18 year old American who has lived through most of World War Two in perfect comfort and peace. In 1944 she decides to use her experience as a pilot to go to England and join the Air Transport Auxiliary which consists of female civilians who transport aeroplanes from factories and between aerodromes. While the work has many risks; flying in bad weather, landing on cracked runways and flying broken down aeroplanes to be fixed, Rose feels that her skills are wasted. Her father taught her to fly when she was 12 years old and Rose already has more flying experience then most of the male combat pilots. Rose eventually convinces her uncle who is high ranking in the air force to allow her to transport him to his station in newly allied occupied France. Everything is going well till on her flight back to England when Rose stumbles on a flying bomb - Vergeltungswaffe 1. These were fairly new bombs that travelled long distances before exploding, like our modern day missile. Rose has heard rumours that these bombs can be rammed or even diffused by just disturbing the air space around them. Without stopping to think she turns her aeroplane and makes attempt after attempt to stop the bomb without blowing herself up. She is finally successful but her happiness turns to fear as she realises that she has gone far off her route and is now lost over countryside that is quite likely still in German control.

In no time at all Rose is discovered by German aircraft and is transported deep into Germany. The Germans are very surprised that she is a female pilot and they are unsure what to do with her as she is an American civilian and not a combat pilot. Finally, more because they are unsure what to do with her, Rose is transported to the concentration camp Ravensbrck.

Concentration Camps were some of the worst places on earth, where people were systematically dehumanised and then starved and worked to death. Jews were the people who made up most of the inhabitants in concentration camps but they were not alone. Sometimes forgotten are the Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians, Greeks, French, soldiers and civilians, religious minorities, social outcasts and members of resistance movements, to name just a few were also placed in these camps. Ravensbrck was a female camp with mainly French, Polish, Russian prisoners.  Rose was aware of concentration camps before she arrived at Ravensbruk but she had also viewed them sceptically and the horrible stories that emerged from them were very often considered simply anti- German propaganda. Rose didn’t believe it. That is until she arrived and met the Rabbits of Ravensbrck. These rabbits were seventy four Polish girls and women who were taken to Ravensbrck to be used as experiments. Their legs were cut open and deliberately damaged and then inside their wounds would be placed gangrene or bacteria and then everything would be bandaged in dirty linen. Their torturous wounds were made to replicate those being received by the German troops so that the doctors could experiment and observe the effects.

What is powerful about this book is that it that the story does not stop when the survivors escape or are released from Ravensbrck. It shows the near impossibility it was for the survivors to pick up the pieces of their lives and carry on. Inside the camp the women had banded together and fought to help each other survive so that there would be a time when someone could tell the world what had happened. However once released, fear, guilt of being alive and emotional scarring made speaking out difficult for many of them.

This novel covers very dark and serious topics and while Rose is a fictional character, the seventy four Rabbits were real women. The story, however is not completely black, instead it shows what happened when the women of Ravensbrck refused to give up being human beings and worked together, regardless of their different nationalities, to survive.

Because of the sacrifices of the women of Ravensbrck, sixty three rabbits survived the war to tell their stories.

“Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,

Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,

Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,

Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,

Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,

Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,

Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziechz, Maria,

Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia”

 (A mnemonic counting-out rhyme that includes all the given names of the seventy four Polish women experimented on in Ravensbrck. Some of the women had similar first names or shared a name, in the poem each name is only listed once.)

Your darkest fear?

Modern Phobias - a litany of contemporary fears

- Tim Lihoreau

What are you afraid of?

 You might have two answers. One that you would toss out for public examination if there was an ice breaker game and then one that is so terrifying or embarrassing you would never readily admit it. Hermione Grainger and I do not share the same fears. I haven’t read all the Harry Potter books. I know that makes me a leper and an outcast of my generation, but I think in the first book, there is a scene where some of the character’s deepest and darkest fears are revealed in front of their entire class. Hermione’s fear is not getting the highest grades on her assessment and that makes my straight B grade self chuckle. Being a straight B student is nothing to be ashamed of and I’m not. While doing well academically is something to aspire to and uphold, I know that academic grades a man does not make. Because I’ve never been in the struggle for top of the class at school instead I was working hard in the pool below to slot in those B’s, this fear is not one that I strongly relate to.

What I am afraid of are cockroaches and scary amusement park rides. If you go upside down, you feel as if you could fall out or you plunge towards the ground it is not natural and it is very, very wrong. I have however been on three of these rides in my life time so I think it is something I can overcome in the hour of greatest need. Cockroaches on the other hand are my kryptonite. You can waltz spiders, geckos, lizards and snakes past me and I won’t blink an eye. However, put me in a ten meter radius of a cockroach, dead or alive, and my strong, capable persona crumbles into a high pitched shrieking, shaking and terrified female. One of my students slipped me a plastic cockroach in a book and my scream would have been heard in New South Wales. She was not remorseful and in fact she was laughing so hard she literally fell off her chair, a fine example of teacher abuse.

Now onto the book. "Modern Phobias - a litany of contemporary fears" by Tim Lihoreau gives a name to some of the modern person's daily fears. Here are some of my favorites: 

• Aedificatorphobia - fear of builders
• Ceterinfanophobia - fear of other people's children
• Fabaphobia - fear of ordering in coffee shops
• Fortavocophobia - fear of speaking loudly while wearing headphones
• Idemophobia - fear of turning up in the same outfit as someone else
• Imitorphobia - fear of talking to someone in their accent
• Maginvalophobia - fear of being visited by an MP in hospital
• Perdetophobia - fear of having not saved one's work
• Stolidophobia - fear of starting a crossword in public
• Vilimusophobia - fear of lift music
• Abcellophobia - fear of leaving a toilet cubicle
• Oviphobia - fear of jumping on the bandwagon

                             

 If you feel embarrassed that you suffer from any of these phobias do you feel any better that they have an official name? Go now and claim as much sympathy as you can. 

These phobias make me laugh! But now on a deep and serious note, because you all know I am a deep and serious person. Should I laugh at people with these phobias? I know I don’t appreciate it when someone laughs at me when I am shaking over a cockroach situation. Are these phobias though, so far-fetched and ridiculous that laughing at them is what they deserve?

This post is finishing with more questions than answers. My English teachers would be proud.