Ich bleibe hier by Marco Balzano: The title picture says it all. The book is about two villages in South Tyrol and their flooding due to the building of dam. But there’s a lot more than the construction of the dam. There is the identity problem of the South Tyrolian population. Austrians before and during WWI, then becoming Italians and being repressed by the fascists under Mussolini because of their German roots. So far I have ignored this chapter of Austrian and Italian history, but now it’s time to dig a little deeper. Great book!
Verity by Colleen Hoover: Colleen Hoover is one of my favourite authors when I need a quick romantic fix. Unfortunately this is not the right book for it. Verity is a suspense story with an ending I immensely disliked. It left me with a weird feeling that the world is not in order. Maybe I should have put it aside right from the start when I read that the two main protagonists meet at the scene of an accident where the head of a man was crushed like a ripe melon. But maybe I just needed an escape fro, the current news and Verity didn’t provide that.
Atomic Love by Jennie Field: This book is so much more than a love story. It’s also about finding yourself and standing up for oneself. Rosalind and Weaver meet while working on the Manhattan project together. But once the bombs drop Rosalind is inconsolable. For her the work was always about using nuclear power peacefully. Weaver on the other hand might have been in touch with the Russians. These characters are all based on real people. I loved that there really was a female scientist working on project. Great read!
Barrow’s Boys by Fergus Fleming: Even though this book accompanied me for over three months, I still liked it a lot. Mr. Barrow was an English bureaucrat who followed his plan to fill in the white spots of the world with a unique single-mindedness. He sent out many men on disastrous expeditions with orders that made only sense to him. If he got results that didn’t fit his opinion, he ignored them. The men like John Franklin, John and James Ross, or Joseph Dalton Hooker are well worth remembering though. They and all the countless other officers and midshipmen gave their utmost to draw the world as we know it today.
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