⋙ PDF The Reader Bernhard Schlink Carol Brown Janeway 9780375408267 Books

The Reader Bernhard Schlink Carol Brown Janeway 9780375408267 Books

Download As PDF : The Reader Bernhard Schlink Carol Brown Janeway 9780375408267 Books

The Reader Bernhard Schlink Carol Brown Janeway 9780375408267 Books

This is definitely one of those books that haunts the memory. It stays with you days after you read it. It's philosophical in tone.
I think Hanna was a victim of circumstances & that Michael was to harsh in his judgement of her.
At the beginning of the book she shows great compassion as she helps a vomiting Michael & walks him back home.
When it is later revealed that she picked the weaker children to read to her before they were put to death, I think she was trapped by the horrible circumstances & reality of the Nazi regime, & that making their lives a little more livable before their untimely deaths was the only thing she had in her power to do to show compassion.
There is also a lot of symbolism in the book. For example: Hanna is illiterate at a time when Germany's average citizen had a Bachelor's degree.
As for her anger toward a young Michael Berg during their vacation, I think this was do to a feeling of helplessness. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment & imagine not being able to read at all. You are 100% reliant on your lover to read the signs to get were your going & thus to get back from whence you came. You can't even order from a menu. You wake up miles from home & that lover you are reliant on to read signs & order food has vanished & left you a piece a paper with writing on it, & you can't read it. You must feel stranded & hopeless. Thus when the young Mr. Berg returns he is surprised by an understandably irate Frau Schmidt.
She is innocent to an extent, & her more guilty ex-coworkers get much more lenient sentences by contrast.
Where does guilt begin or innocence win? I think that is an unanswerable question, & one for the history of not only Hanna, but all of mankind throughout all of history.


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The Reader Bernhard Schlink Carol Brown Janeway 9780375408267 Books Reviews

I purchased this book in January 2017. THE READER isn’t the type of book that I normally read so it sat unread until I noticed that it was the oldest unread book in my library. Last week, I decided to read it.

I had forgotten what THE READER was about. When I started reading it, I thought I had gotten a new version of SUMMER OF ’42 by Herman Raucher with its forbidden love. I wasn’t too impress. I almost thought about giving up on the book. After reading about 1/3 of the book, it changed to something totally unexpected - The Holocaust, German guilty and atonement, war crimes tribunal, war crimes defenses (“I was just following orders”), illiteracy, etc. The last half of the book had me totally engrossed and mesmerized. The ending was a tear jerker for me. This is one of my TOP 100 books; and one that I will probably re-read.
This is one of those books I truly enjoyed reading. It has become one of my favorite books. I love the writing style. Michael (the main character) takes you on a journey with his story. I felt every emotion, every frustration and his anger towards society. Michael was a brilliant man whose only weakness was a woman 19 years his senior. Michael is very young, 15, when he starts to have a relationship with Hanna. I understand a lot of people considered Hanna to be a pedophile. If the role was reversed and Michael was a young girl and Hanna was an older man, the man would have been considered a sexual predator. But, reading through the book, you don't get that from Hanna. I felt Michael's love for her surpassed any obstacle that tried to keep them apart. I assumed if Hanna did not die, Michael would have still loved her and given her the world. Age did not matter in this book. Reading through Michael's view point, you as the reader did not care that there is a huge gap in age. You wanted Michael to find peace and he would never find peace if Hanna was not in his life. Hanna was Michael's everything and he couldn't understand why; maybe it’s because Hanna kept Michael alive. Michael had something to live for. He was constantly sick. I think Michael was much stronger then Hanna. She was weak and she did not know how to open up. My heart broke when Michael entered Hanna's cell and found a picture of him graduating and he couldn't breathe, all he wanted to do was cry.

"As she spoke, I had continued to kneel, my eyes on the pictures and notes, fighting back tears".

I got the same emotions when (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollow) Professor Snape found one of Lillian's (Harry Potter's mom) letter and her handwriting and Professor Snape broke down in the room and started weeping. At that moment you felt the unconditional love Professor Snape had for Lillian. What kept Professor Snape alive was Lillian) what kept Michael going throughout his life were Hanna and her memories. Michael had unconditional love for Hanna and I think she knew that; she did not want to burden him with her illiteracy.

“She learned to read with you. She borrowed the books you read on tape out of the library, and followed what she heard, word by word and sentence by sentence.

I fell in love with this book from beginning to the end.
If the purpose of this book is to make the reader think about guilt and conscience, it succeeds. But it's so much more complex than that. If you loves someone who is guilty of something horrible, does that make you also guilty? Does guilt for smaller things equate to or trump guilt for more horrible things? How do we look on our past or the past of our parents' generation? Where in lies absolution, if it exists?

This book is moving, romantic, sad, upsetting, and ... poignant. All of which seem unimportant, really, but this is one of those books that ought to be read, including by you. It's not just about 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung," really, but about our care and lack of care for other human beings. Which, really, is the crux of life, no?

In another way, this is a book about books, not in a primary way, but in a secondary way that is quite beautiful, even if it isn't the point.

The author says,"The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive.” It couldn't be more true.
This is definitely one of those books that haunts the memory. It stays with you days after you read it. It's philosophical in tone.
I think Hanna was a victim of circumstances & that Michael was to harsh in his judgement of her.
At the beginning of the book she shows great compassion as she helps a vomiting Michael & walks him back home.
When it is later revealed that she picked the weaker children to read to her before they were put to death, I think she was trapped by the horrible circumstances & reality of the Nazi regime, & that making their lives a little more livable before their untimely deaths was the only thing she had in her power to do to show compassion.
There is also a lot of symbolism in the book. For example Hanna is illiterate at a time when Germany's average citizen had a Bachelor's degree.
As for her anger toward a young Michael Berg during their vacation, I think this was do to a feeling of helplessness. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment & imagine not being able to read at all. You are 100% reliant on your lover to read the signs to get were your going & thus to get back from whence you came. You can't even order from a menu. You wake up miles from home & that lover you are reliant on to read signs & order food has vanished & left you a piece a paper with writing on it, & you can't read it. You must feel stranded & hopeless. Thus when the young Mr. Berg returns he is surprised by an understandably irate Frau Schmidt.
She is innocent to an extent, & her more guilty ex-coworkers get much more lenient sentences by contrast.
Where does guilt begin or innocence win? I think that is an unanswerable question, & one for the history of not only Hanna, but all of mankind throughout all of history.