One day, two libraries, six books

My local public library re-opened today after closing in November for an internal make over.  I am so happy to have it back!  I checked out a bunch of music and these three books:

  • Publishing a Blog with Blogger, 2nd Edition, by Elizabeth Castro.  I hope to pick up some pointers on making this blog a better reading experience for the one follower that I currently have.
  • The Everything Feng Shui Decluttering Book by Katina Jones.  My partner and I have a mission to do some serious decluttering around the house this year.  It started with my home office last year and the clutter is creeping back already.  I need all the help I can get.  
  • Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader by Percy Ernst Schramm, translated by Donald S. Detwiler.  Although I’ve read a fair amount about Germany in World War I (my grandfather fought on the German side), when it comes to World War II, I’ve mainly read books and memoirs about the Pacific Theater and not much about the war in Germany or Europe.  When I was younger and in the Marines, I wanted to know about the battles in which Marines participated.  However, my mother and family lived through WWII in Dresden and I haven’t had the stomach to read about Germany during World War II.  Plus, the number of books on WWII and Nazi Germany is just so daunting…where does one begin?  Schramm’s book was the thinnest one available about Hitler on the shelf today, which is why I chose it.  Last year I read Lev Raphael’s superb memoir, My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped.   My Germany came out in January 2009 and it caught my eye at work when I was unpacking boxes of new books.  I read the flaps, put it on the shelving cart, picked it back up and read a few pages, put it back on the cart, left the room, and then went back for it a few hours later on my way home for the night.  In the last few months I’ve read two novels about Germans in WWII, both of which caught my eye at two different libraries: The Arms Maker of Berlin and An Honorable German.  I’m currently reading a non-fiction memoir:  Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936-1949 by Siegfried Knappe with Ted Brusaw.  I’m 200 pages into it and its a gripping read.  I came across this book on my college library’s book exchange shelf on Friday and decided it was meant to be.  If you have a “must read” WWII book that you think I should read, please let me know.
Earlier in the day I stopped in at my college’s library to pick up two books that came in for me today from the main campus:

I love libraries!

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