Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all thee came from #6degrees chains.
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous
Why I have it: via Hopewell’s Library
Summary: For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building – the author captures the lives of her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians.
I’m thinking: Yes – how had I missed this one?
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
Why I have it: because I enjoyed Bunny.
Summary: Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror.
I’m thinking: Yes – Awad is odd, and I like it. It’s a no after reading the review at Grab the Lapels.
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
Why I have it: I’ve enjoyed Levy’s writing in the past.
Summary: 1988: Saul Adler, a narcissistic historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator’s sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul’s girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life.
I’m thinking: Yes – the opening hooked me.