under the covers.

I have been on a reading frenzy these past few days. I have been hiding under the covers with books. Last week I happened to catch Elie Wiesel on Oprah where he was talking about his visit to Auschwitz with Oprah in January. I felt compelled to pick up his book and read it. “Night” is a good 3-4 hour read, but it is powerful to read his story. Elie was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in Transylvania and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. He would never see his mother or sisters again, while his father would die in the camp only days before liberation. The hunger, the fear and the terror. This is a testamony to what happened in the camps-one that you can never forget.

On my reading list was My Friend Leonard by James Frey. I enjoyed it, but it is a little harder to read as autobiographical after everything that has happened. I treat this book more like fiction, but then I question every biography or autobiography I read. Questions run through my head, like: how can this author really remember this incident in such vivid detail at only 3 years old, how can they remember this meal, this event, etc.?!

I also started to read “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, but as much as I tried, I could not get “into” this book. So many characters and personal histories thrown out in the first couple of chapters that I really had to work at keeping up who was who. Not fun. Maybe this book will “speak” to me at another time.