Empire of the Sun

By: J.G. Ballard

An incredible book. While reading this book I realized I had never heard much about the WW2 in the pacific outside of the American military operations of island hoping and the movies that came out of those events. I found this book very interesting. What was more surprising is it was based of Ballard’s actual events that occurred to him during this time. I found myself wanting to so bad to know that everything would turn out well in the end. There were a few missing points in the book that I wish I could know the answer to, like what happened to certain individuals after the end of the book.

I’m trying really hard not to spoil the book for anyone who has not read it yet. I felt my mind completely engrossed in the book and I found myself day dreaming during the day and finding myself at Lunghua camp and realizing how grateful I should be that my meal is more than just rice and a sweet potato.

Would I say this book changed my life? Doubtful but it has made me more interested to read other books of the same nature, I want to go and read a book of someone who was in a concentration camp in Germany and then sit and compare what they had to go through, I would also be more interested now in reading more books of the pacific world war 2.

Rating: 4/5

Robinson Crusoe

By: Daniel Defoe

Oh my gosh this book was terrible! I wish I had of looked further into it before actually getting and reading this book. I gave it two stars because it was something I had heard about before and someone thought well enough to make a movie of it. I’m glad to be able to say that yes I’ve ready Robinson Crusoe but it’s not a book I would ever recommend to anyone. The last 1/4 of the book was pretty good with a disappointing ending. The first 3/4 of the book though seemed like Defoe just wanted to increase the length of his book and many times I thought I was re-reading a page simple because there was so much redundancy in the book.

It took me two weeks to read this book when I finished one about 100 pages longer in about 4 days, I just found this book put me to sleep and I couldn’t concentrate on it at all. Finally I didn’t care much for how it was written. When speakers in a conversation changed the only way you could tell was by the apostrophes. Normally where there is a line break there was none, this confused me many times with the dialogs. This may have just been my version of the book though

Rating: 2/5

Night

By: Elie Wiesel

If you haven’t read this book then you must read it. I have nothing else to say about it than that. The feelings and emotions this book stirred within me are too great to put into words. At the end of the book there is a speech given by Elie Wiesel and there were two phrases that jumped out at me and that’s what I will finish with.

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.

Rating: 5/5