Catch Up Post

I've been so lackadaisical about my book blogging the last week or two. I have devoured a number of books so I am going to use this as a Catch Up entry and will try to be more organised in future!

In the last two weeks I have read

Princess Masako by Ben Hills

The Cave of the Yellow Dog by Dbyambasuren Davaa and Lisa Reisch

On Hitler's Mountain by Irmgard Hunt

Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch - The Letters of Diana Cooper and Evelyn Waugh

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West

Firstly, Princess Masako. Princess Masako is the Crown Princess of Japan. Harvard and Oxford educated Masako married Prince Naruhito in 1993. The insight into the Japanese royal traditions, which make the Windsors look positively trendy, was extremely interesting as I knew next to nothing about them. However, my heart bleeds for Masako who comes across as a bird in a gilded cage. I read this book in a day, I simply couldn't put it down! I was shaking my head in disbelief as I read some of the facts. It seems quite unbelievable that the royals aren't in charge of their own lives. Read it and be prepared to shake your head in disbelief!!

Next, The Cave of the Yellow Dog. I watched the movie last year and it was so beautiful it made me cry. The book is the story of the making of the movie by a Mongolian girl who went to Germany to study film and then returned to her native country to make a movie about the lives of a Mongolian nomadic family. What a lovely inspiring book! The Batchuluuny family are simple people, living in a yurt and living off their livestock. One day Nansaa, the eldest daughter, finds a puppy in a cave. She brings the dog home and names it "Zochor" (Spot). Her father is worried, knowing that wolves live in caves and may follow its scent and kill their livestock. Let's just say that Zochor comes through for the family! I recommend the movie and the book. The children are simply adorable! It really made me want to visit Mongolia.

I discovered this book via a blog a few months ago. Irmgard Hunt was born in Nazi Germany and brought up in the Bavarian village of Berchtesgaden, just outside the fence that surrounded Hitler's alpine retreat. At the age of three, she was photographed sitting on the Fuhrer's knee - one of her parents' proudest moments. It's a very interesting insight into how "ordinary" German people were affected by Adolf Hitler. Some of her family, including her parents, were staunch Hitler supporters but others, including her grandfather, were wary from the start. A good read!

This was a gift from my dear friend Josie - the most intelligent young lady I have ever met! Gosh, I wish I had been as well read as she is at 18! She has exquisite taste in literature. Anyhow this is, obviously, a collection of letters between Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper. Their friendship was very strong and this collection covers a 30 year period. I love reading letters and this collection is an incredible insight into their lives. Both of them were very headstrong and opinionated and this makes fascinating reading! What lives they lived!

This was another gift from Josie. I've wanted to read more of VSW for a long time. This book was so sweet and beautifully written. It's the tale of Lady Slane, a recently widowed British aristocrat. Her husband has recently died at the age of 94, leaving his family with the problem of “What was to be done about Mother?” The family are four sons and two daughters. Lady Slane at 88 is still a beautiful woman and quickly but quietly asserts her independence. She ignores her children and decides to live, with her maid Genoux, in a house in Hampstead (one of my most favourite parts of London) that she had first seen thirty years previously when she was a young vivacious woman hoping to be a painter. She reflects over her life and how marriage and motherhood have "slain" her.

A really gentle book with a most likable main character - it's whetted my appetite to read more Vita Sackville West.

Oooh, another book I read was "The Bastard of Istanbul" - set in the United States and Turkey, concerns two families — one Turkish, living in Istanbul, and the other Armenian, divided between Tucson, Arizona, and San Francisco. At its center are the four sisters of the Kazanci family, who live together in Istanbul, and Armanoush, the Armenian-American stepdaughter of their brother, Mustapha. Events are set in motion when Armanoush secretly travels to Turkey and unwittingly uncovers a secret that links the two families together and ties them to the 1915 Armenian massacre. I enjoyed the book, not as much as I thought I would though. I would probably give it 6/10. I had to force myself to finish it to find out the twist.