Rainy Day Reads

One of my favorite settings is wartime. It doesn’t specifically have to be World War II, there is just a lot of great fiction set during this time period. I feel kind of bad saying that World War II is a favorite setting of mine, because this was very much a real time and place with real people living through atrocities, and large numbers of people not surviving. If feels wrong to exploit that for my pleasure, but at the same time I do think these books are important. They tell the personal stories of the people of the time, and if not based directly on true events they can share snippets of the history that may have drowned in the larger telling of the historical events. If it is done well, that is. Below are 5 books that I think are not only great fiction, but that gave me new insight into the history of a period I thought I was pretty well versed in.   City of Thieves by David Benioff This is the story about Lev, a young boy in Leningrad during the Nazi siege...

I don’t often cry when reading books, but there have been a few notable ones over the last few years that have made me shed a tear. I thought I would share these books, as they are some of my favorite ones, and who doesn’t need a good tear jerker now and then? Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein This book is set during the Second World War and follows two young women who both work in the war effort. Somehow they end up behind enemy lines and they must each try to get out of trouble in their own way. The thing that got to my cold cynical heart was the relationship between these two women and the sheer bravery of especially one of them. The lengths she was willing to go to were amazing and it wrung a tear from my eye.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Another book set during World War II this one follows a young German girl, who is left with foster parents due to various circumstances. We follow her struggles finding a place for herself in the new family and the new t...