Welcome to Litsy!

1) The Trial of Anna Thalberg—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Maybe not a book for everyone, but I felt the writing style added intensity and feeling to the horrors of the story.

2) The Book That Held Her Heart—⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ .5 I originally gave it four stars, but time has made me reconsider. The final book felt rushed and was really all over the place. A death from the end of book 2 that was so gut wrenching doesn‘t even receive a mention in this book.

#12booksof2025

Random book from our personal library.

Up next for reading

While Schönhaus' story of living in Berlin under the Nazi regime as a Jewish document forger is interesting, the writing was just so, so bad.

88/80

#DoubleSpin @TheAromaofBooks

#ReadingMyTBR #Read2025 @DieAReader

"My survival is the result of events in which the 'law of large numbers' played the major part."

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

This reading is inspired by The Book of Lost Names that piqued my interest in the people who forged documents in WWII. Shout out to @Offmybookshelf for finding this book and passing it on to me ❤️

These were also fantastic reads with Mom! The Immense World audio was marvelously narrated by the author; even through the science-heavy bits, his enthusiasm was engaging. Mom and I bring this one up a lot, and it was really fun to discuss the book as we read it.

Erik Larson is top-notch for making non-fiction feel like a thriller novel! This one isn‘t my favorite of his, but still compelling.

Lots of ongoing thoughts about all of these!

#BookReport

Finally finished Kristen Lavransdatter! It was slow going as my attention span this year has mostly been that of a gnat but I enjoyed it. Also enjoyed Josephine Baker‘s memoir. What an incredibly fascinating woman!

The format of What We Knew was interesting. The individual sections held my interest more than the rest but that is me not the book.

Caught up on buddy reads except the Picasso which I will read today.

This fell a bit flat for me. The story is of the Berlin Wall - it goes up, dividing the city, and splitting Lisette, in the East, from her baby in hospital in the West. I wanted to read about 1960s Germany and I did get that in parts. Yet at least half the book goes back to Lisette‘s youth in WWII, which I didn‘t want. The writing struck me as very Kristin Hannah; if you enjoy her books, you‘ll likely enjoy this.

A couple of weekends ago here in Australia, we had a ‘top 100 books of the 21st century‘ countdown, as voted by our national broadcaster, Radio National, listeners. Almost 300,000 Aussies voted. I‘d read 83 and decided to prioritise reading the (potentially 17) remaining books I had waiting patiently on my #tbr shelves. This is one of them. A fascinating account of the Stasi that I have had recommended to me more times than I can count.