Official Selections of the Reblog Book Club so far!
See all posts:
Fangirl by rainbowrowell
The Impossible Knife of Memory by lauriehalseanderson
California by italicsmine
Brown Girl Dreaming by jacquelinewoodson
Vivian Apple at the End of the World by katiecoyle
All The Rage by summerscourtney
Saint Mazie by jamiatt
Salt to The Sea by @rutasepetysauthor
Dear Tumblr,
After four and a half years here as your @books and @reblogbookclub friend and guide, I’m taking an unmissable opportunity at @hmhbooks and moving on. I’m immensely grateful for everyone I’ve met and worked with and read on my Tumblr dash and IRL, and I hope you’ll all stay in touch.
I’ll still be here, of course, same book time, same book channel, and on twitter, instagram, and tinyletter.
Love you so!
- Rachel
Dear Reblog Book Club,
Of all the things I’ve done in my time at Tumblr, you guys are my heart. Thank you for being brilliant, thoughtful, kind, creative, generous, talented, curious, and joyful. Please keep sharing books with me and with each other.
Perhaps the book club will reemerge here under new leadership; perhaps it is all in your hands now. I think we’re gonna make it either way…
Gratefully,
@rachelfershleiser
(via rachelfershleiser)
Every nation has hidden history, countless stories preserved only by those who experienced them. Stories of war are often read and discussed worldwide by readers whose nations stood on opposite sides during battle. History divided us, but through reading we can be united in story, study, and remembrance. Books join us together as a global reading community, but more important, a global human community striving to learn from the past.
Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys (383)
This quote really summed up my feelings towards the story. I felt connected to the characters, the time period, and the loss.
Okay, Analyze This Character open thread #2!
Florian: GO!
Okay.
1. Please let ALL of the dreamy boys carry babies around, forever. Forever and ever. But especially Florian, because he’s kind of spy and he’s doing secret things that could get him killed, and then there’s a disaster and he’s just thinking baby, which I was very excited about.Sorry, I know this is a very serious book and a very serious topic, but I am just so concerned with his romance plot and his baby plot, and I’m glad the book focused more on those things than the part where he stole a key to a secret treasure room.
2. But also: I think we can compare Alfred’s response and Florian’s response to the war as mirror images. Alfred felt like he was owed respect and used his place in the war as a way to get power and, more specifically, power over women. Florian found out that his job was secretly helping the Nazi party, but instead of continuing to stay in a safe environment, a place that was clearly important to protect, he chose to leave and collected this group of refugees on his way out of the country. He doesn’t ever seem to resent helping the women, and he doesn’t expect anything in return.
3. Does this make him too much of a white knight? Is it insulting that he functioned as a protector to Joana, when she seemed to be doing okay enough without him? I don’t think so, but I’d be interested to hear everyone else’s thoughts! Personally, I feel like the Joana/Florian romance speaks to our ability to create tiny safe places, homes, even in the middle of a disaster. I was real into it, but survivor stories are kind of my jam.
(via youngadultescent)
“Some people ask me, ‘Well, why write these obscure stories? Is hidden history even important?’
Yes. I maintain it is important because during my research in museums, I found bottles that contained messages that were thrown overboard from some of these refugee ships. And that told me that these souls were desperate for someone–anyone–to know their story.
You are that someone.
We know the villains’ names. We teach the villains’ names but we don’t know the victims’ names.
Nine thousand three hundred and forty-three people perished on the Wilhelm Gustloff. Each one had a story.
Lift their bottles from the water.
Please give them a voice.“
————————————
Salt to the Sea is such a good eye-opening book. And after a lot of year loving historical fiction, I finally realized why I hated History back when I was in highschool and yet loved reading historical fiction.
It’s all about how the story unfolds.
In class, it’s all ‘this happened’ ‘that happened’. It was always about who won and who lost, who were the leaders, who were the important persons. But in novels like this one, we get a real feel of what was actually happening, even though the characters involved are fictional. It’s about all the other unknown people who were caught up in such tragic events that they had no way of controlling.
This abandoned hat in the gutter is giving me all sorts of Emilia feels!
Was putting off finishing Salt to the Sea because I knew it was about to get sad and FUCK DID IT EVER. Also, way to be ALFRED. A DOUCHE TO THE END. Seriously? He stole a woman’s coat and a dead child’s life vest? What a fuckity fucking scum fuck. I haven’t despised a character this much in a long long time.
Love this restrained take from Katie.
Okay, Analyze This Character open thread #2!
Florian: GO!
More Alfred Thoughts:
I had basically the same feeling about Alfred. The way he is presented turns his actions and his beliefs into a part of a bigger logic that seemed, in my opinion, to be based on low self esteem and a desperate yearning for recognition. I can understand how one thing led to the other and how he eventually ended up being the cruel and cold hearted person we meet in the novel.
However , as already mentioned, this does not excuse his actions. It also didn’t make him more likeable to me. In fact, I think that sympathy is not the goal in presenting the logic behind Alfred’s hatred. To me this seemed to be Ruta’s way of emphasising how the dynamics of such a hateful worldview, like the one the Nazis promoted, traps the weak and the oppressed (such as Alfred) into thinking they hold the power. Alfred adapts the Nazi worldview and focuses so much on hating and oppressing others in order to feel better about himself, that he does not see how everyone suffers under this regime.
Does that make sense?
“Fedora-wearing nice guy” is an almost perfect description of Alfred; I really can’t remember the last time I disliked a character this much. Yes, perhaps there’s an empathetic history where he was made fun of and picked on, but hey, so were a lot of people and they didn’t become self-centered Nazis. That’s what irks me the most about Alfred: how utterly selfish he is, in the true sense of the word. Everything is about him and all of his decisions are driven by making himself feel more important; even the letters he writes are solely for himself (I could say more about this but I don’t want to be too spoiler-y).
I also think it’s interesting that you see a glimpse of his home life: his mother seems like a loving person, which only furthers the sense that there is something innately off about Alfred. He may not be ‘evil’ in the sense that he’s actively looking to hurt other people (i.e. he’s not a serial killer… yet), but since his selfish actions lead to such horrifying consequences that he completely and intentionally fails to acknowledge, I can’t think of him as anything but evil. Like Trump, to borrow Rachel’s example.
Exactly! I felt sad for him. His feelings of inadequacy and need for importance don’t excuse his behavior, at all, but I think the author included Alfred to show how easy it can be for some people to gravitate toward a hateful movement. It’s unrealistic to believe that all, or even most, Nazis or Nazi-sympathizers were just doing what they had to do to survive. I would bet that a lot of people were like Alfred, they felt like they were owed something and needed to do something about it.
And I think this willingness to join a bigger cause to defend a perceived loss of autonomy definitely still happens. Nice guys never get the girl, men’s rights are under attack, games are being unfairly criticized for their sexism, and gosh dang, if we could just build a big enough wall, maybe Americans would feel more safe.
Emotionally mature adults don’t really label people as exclusively nice or bad (uh, most of the time, like some people are Bad, but you know what I mean here). And I would say that actually people really do want a nice partner. And they usually want their nice partner to have other redeeming qualities. Feminism isn’t about taking away men’s rights, as if that is even a thing that has ever happened. Video games (and gaming culture) do have a problem where women and genders other than cis men feel excluded. Like, there are a lot of real violent video games and women are targeted in the game and so are the gamers in real life. Aaaaaaand I think we all know that Americans shoot each other with enough regularity that no one even takes notice of it anymore, so I cannot imagine being moved enough by those racist “safety” rants to vote for Trump based on your logical assessment of real threats. If you were voting based on safety, not racism, wouldn’t you also want better, more affordable, healthcare (including mental health resources, access to counseling, and a better way for victims to receive healthcare after a violent act), revision of gun laws, police reform, and other issues that would help mitigate or prevent the amount of gun violence we inflict on ourselves? But here we are.
It was pretty easy to see why Alfred gravitated toward service in the German army. I think we’re supposed to look at the circumstances that lead to him (and others like him) to a political cause that ended in the genocide of millions of people, and see how we can keep that from happening again.
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