Hi all, and welcome to Literary Bread! It’s taken me a few weeks now to get this site up and running, but I’m happy to share that I will be posting with more regularity moving forward. Since this is my first official post, I wanted to start off by sharing a little bit about myself.
I am, among other things, a bibliophile, a francophile, and a lover of fluffy animals (rabbits and goats and alpacas, oh my!) I have always had a love of reading and writing, but my increase in free time as a result of COVID-19 has led to me devouring at least a book a week. As a newbie writer and passionate reader, it seemed like the perfect time to launch a blog to hone my voice.
My hope is to post a weekly review along with my latest musings and occasional bookish news. I do include affiliate links along with most of my reviews and book listings to make it easy for you to get access to your next read! I am an affiliate of Bookshop, an online book retailer and B-Corp with a mission to “financially support local, independent bookstores.” In other words, Bookshop is the convenient answer to Amazon, allowing you to still shop online while also supporting the local book shops of your choice. At the time of this post, Bookshop has already raised over 6.5 million dollars to support indie bookstores—I’m proud to help further support that mission.
Disclaimer: As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Review
Typically, I try to hold off on reading any reviews before posting my own. But in this case, I must admit that I did take a peek at how Stella was received in Germany, and I was shocked to see that it was largely written off as “Holcaust Kitsch.” I have certainly read my share of WWII books and am a particular glutton of books focused on the French Resistance (All the Light We Cannot See, I’m looking at you!). While I was not as emotionally invested in Stella as I have been in some other related novels, I did find it an enjoyable and poetically written read. Please check out this week’s full review to get my complete thoughts on Stella by Takis Würger.
Books on My Radar
To anyone else out there who has a soft spot for WWII fiction, I have included a list of a few of my favorites below. They may not be translated works, but they will certainly take you on a journey to another place and time.
This is my personal favorite among the books in this list. Half-Blood Blues is a captivating story that explores what it meant to be a person of color and a musician during WWII Paris and Berlin. I read this book this spring and was absolutely enraptured—keep your eye out for a full review in the future!
This book is the only non-fiction work included in this list. It is the most encyclopedic account I have found about the occupation of France during WWII. Everything is thoroughly researched and cited, yet it is still an accessible read that provides an intimate window into life at that time.
And here’s a few more, all of which I read and enjoyed:
That’s all for now!
-LB