Review: The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz: A True Story of World War II

The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz: A True Story of World War II by Denis Avey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings when it comes to this book. Mainly after reading a lot of negative comments on reviews online about this novel and about Denis Avey, a lot of people call him a liar, that the things he said he did, never really happened at all. But what gets me is...how do they know what happened then and to him? They weren't there, it happened over 70 years ago and many people had passed on or died during the war, so any witness may not be able to say it it happened or not.

Other people say that he's just a old man, making a mistake in the retelling of his history during the second world war, even Jew's have said that it couldn't of happened. But we don't know for sure,there is a reason why the past is the past. And the longer we more forward, the further the past goes and the less people there is to help state whether a story is true or not.

I would like to believe what I've read within this book, but like most post war stories which come out many years later, you have to take them with a pinch of salt, decide on whether you want to believe a piece of information or whether to decide straight away that this person has lied.

If everything that Dennis Avey has said happened, then I call him a brave man, to do something so daring and dangerous takes a lot of courage when facing down the members of the SS. But as most soldiers from the second world war, many don't speak about their experience until years later, sometimes even never at all. I personally have never spoken, or even known if any of my family served during the second world war, I do know that I have a 3x or 4x uncle who served in the battle of the Somme and is buried over in France from world war one.

But I would recommend anyone who wants to learn more about the horror which went on during the war, from different views and to try and find out whether it happened or not, I would tell them to read this novel and then decide for themselves. I know, that had I read all these reviews before I started reading The man who broke in to Auschwitz, then my view on the book would be highly different.

At the end of the day, everyone has their own thoughts to what may of happened and not happened during those years. Just because someone may not believe a person when they are retelling their story, doesn't mean that they should abuse that person. After all, they thought for us in a time that protected our country, all they have to imagine is what life would be like if those men never gave their lives during the second world war, whether they died or are still alive now, because at the end of the day, nearly all those men lost their innocence in that war.

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Review: The Poison Artist

The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this book, the blurb made it sound interesting, so when I finally decided to read it, I was expecting to be whisked away in to another world filled with crime and murder and a little romance. Instead, I found myself struggling to get through the first couple of chapters, it was almost as if the writer was repeating the same scenes over and over again, just a different day and a different bar.

I must day that I am disappointed in the novel quite a bit, I am sure that others greatly enjoyed it, but for me I never. I found that it had only started to really start becoming enjoyable for me was around chapter twenty two to chapter twenty three, with only twenty seven chapters within the book itself, it was a large disappointment.

The writing wasn't terrible, better than a lot of other books I have read, so it wasn't too hard to get in to it near the end. There was many times at the beginning that I just wanted to put the book down and not pick it up again, but because I'm stubborn and don't like not finishing things, I pushed through it.
Sadly, it's a novel that I won't be keeping on my bookshelves, so I will be passing it on to my local charity store in hopes that someone else will get some enjoyment out of it.

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Sticky notes and unread books.

So, I decided to put little sticky notes on the spines of the books I hadn't read, which actually turned out to be a lot more than I had originally realized. 
It's quite daunting really to see how many unread books I have sitting on my bookshelves, even more so when I know that I have read 61 books this year, because looking at the books that hasn't got a sticky tab on, it doesn't look that many.

Has anyone else came across this problem before? I mean, you think you have probably read nearly all of the books that you own, and then by doing something as simple as adding a sticky note to a spine just shows that you haven't read as many as you thought you had. It's quite disheartening in a way because you want to expand you views on the books, to expand your adventures through each and every story that you read.

But at the same time, it helps to give you a goal towards reading more, the goal of making those tabs disappear one by one until hardly any are left...of course, that's easier to say than actually do, since...well, who can resist the urge to buy new books every week or so? I know I can't.

On another note, who else went out and brought the new Stephen and Owen King novel? I did and I think it's beautiful. Although, I do have to be honesty and say, seeing the American version of the bookcover kind of makes me enjoy and like the UK version just that little more. (I presume its the US and the UK edition covers, I could be wrong of course).

I know that on the UK editions of the hardback, on the cover of the book, underneath the dust jacket we had limited edition prints, there was four or five that you could've gotten. On mine, I got a version which had the snake on it. I think the other ones you could've gotten was a moth, a tiger, a peacock, I know that I'm forgetting one or two, but I can't quite remember without looking online to try and find out.

Here, just look for yourself at how beautiful it looks.

Review: The Lost Years

The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As always when it comes to Mary Higgins Clark, I was drawn in instantly to the story line, kept glued to every page which left me not wanting to put it down at all. (Of course I did have too). From the very start of the book and until the end, it was a whirl wind adventure of murder and mystery and one sided relationships, a serious of unexpected twists just adds to the amazing talent Clark weaves in to her novels.

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