Today I am starting a new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity by Katherine Boo . Lately I have felt a little melancholy and it has shown in my reading choices.
Description from Amazon.com
From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities." Anyone feel like reading it with me?
I also just finished Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Dr Miklos Nyiszli.
Description from Amazon.com
When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Jew and a medical doctor, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared from death for a grimmer fate: to perform “scientific research” on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the infamous “Angel of Death”: Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele’s personal research pathologist. Miraculously, he survived to give this terrifying and sobering account.
“The best brief account of the Auschwitz experience available.”--The New York Review of Books

I literally read this book in one day. I couldn't put it down. It made me uncomfortable and sick to my stomach. But sometimes we need to put ourselves out there, to look at the deepest horrors of the human soul and the greatest triumphs of the human spirit. Even after finishing it, I am still thinking of the young girl that survived the gas chamber, was brought back to conscienousness by the author only to be shot to death less than an hour later. This isn't fiction. I wonder who that girl was. I wonder.  

Source: amazon.com via Book on Pinterest

 
I am happy to announce that reader Rachel won the autographed copy of Ree Drummond's new cookbook "Food from My Frontier." Congratulations! I will be contacting you soon to get your address to send it to you. Thank you to everyone for spreading the word and entering! I'll be having more fun contests in the future! Visit The Pioneer Woman on her blog www.thepioneerwoman.com Right now she is having a great contest on Tom Hanks movies. And did I mention, when I met her at the book signing I told her how much I loved the entertainment section of her blog and she should do something on Tom Hanks! Whoot! Whoot! Thanks again everyone!