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 three samples are ones that I’ve had for ages on my Kindle.
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Summary: The story of Soviet society told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman’s characters must work out their destinies in a world torn apart by ideological tyranny and war.
I’m thinking: Maybe. Everything about it appeals except the 864 pages. Do I have the stamina…?
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous
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 anonymous author depicts 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.
Up the Junction by Nell Dunn
Summary: First published in 1963, Dunn writes about the lives of working-class women in London and the industrial slums of Battersea – clip-joint hustles, petty thieving, candid sexual encounters, casual birth and casual death.
I’m thinking: Yes.
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