Life is more than the Cubicle

I finished The Help this weekend in 1 day and if that's testament to my opinion about the book, then I really don't need to write much here :P

I want to apologize for my rambling post on Mirror Mirror. Looking back, I definitely gave away way too much about the storyline and sorry to all those who haven't read it and who want to read it. The book just made no sense to me and I had to force myself to finish but that's really no excuse.

Anyway, I finished this little gem recently and I love love it!

Finished this book over the weekend and this has definitely been a work in progress. I bought this book way back in 2010 some time (probably before the summer) and it has taken me that long to read. If that's any indication, well, I didn't really enjoy it too much.



This is another one of the fairy tale rewrites from Gregory Maguire and while I love love love his other books like Wicked, Tales of an Ugly Stepsister and Son of a Witch, I just really could not get through this one. This is his version of Snow White mixing in the Grimm's fairy tale storyline that we all recognize with the real historical figures of the Borgia family in the 1500's.

The main character, Bianca de Nevada, grows up in a picturesque farm in Montefiore in the Tuscany/Umbria region with her beloved father Don Vicente. Her idyllic lifestyle is then turned on its head when a train of nobles randomly comes into town headed by Cesare Borgia and his sister Lucrezia. Cesare Borgia sends Don Vicente on a year long quest to recover a relic from the tree of knowledge (apples), Lucrezia takes over daily life in Montefiore. As time goes on (1 year) and Bianca grows up (not really), Lucrezia becomes jealous of her (like a crazy woman since Bianca is still a child) and hires her huntsman to take Bianca out into the forest and kill her (bring back her heart etc. etc.). The huntsman can't do it, and I guess is somehow infatuated or in love with Bianca (who is I think about 10 at the time...weird) and he leaves her in the forest where the dwarves (written as stone people with no features or garbled up features) find her and take her home. She apparantly then slips into a coma for 5 years or so and wakes up as an adult woman and a bunch of nastiness ensues on the first day that she wakes up. Maguire also describes the dwarves home but can't seem to make up his mind as to whether it's a cottage or a cave or a craggy rock or a rock formation or something rock like and dark but with pillars and walls? Apparantly it's also close to her home but she doesn't return home and lives in an almost self-imposed imprisonment where she's too afraid to step outside.

Anyway, Lucrezia is keeping tabs on her through a magic mirror that somehow connects the stone cottage of the dwarves with the farm. The mirror was originally in the possession of the stone people (who can merge their bodies into stone walls to manipulate objects) and they're trying to get it back. Then a bunch of weird and confusing things happen. Lucrezia tries to kill Bianca about 3 times I think and never gets it right and each time she tries to kill her, the method just gets weirder and weirder. She finally gets her to die and she stays like that for probably 5 or 10 more years...then the huntsman shows up confessing his love for Bianca and he's probably 30 years her senior and was living as a monk in some hillside somewhere to repent for not killing her. Then Lucrezia's son shows up and wants to kiss her because apparantly he knows that's how to wake her up. And then at the end, she's suddenly awake and walking but Maguire never explains how she wakes up or even what happened to wake her up...Yeah...

This was just a strange strange book. The characters were never really given time to develop and were thrown together almost as an afterthought. Maguire probably got the character portrayal of Bianca and Lucrezia correct in terms of the Disney version that we all know, Bianca was a completely witless and brainless girl and Lucrezia was just nuts. But either way, the story was confusing, hard to follow and the characters poofed in and out of the story with no follow through. Definitely not as good as Wicked was with its superb characters like Elphaba.

I thought I would do something a little different and figured that since I'm a pretty voracious reader, I would share some of the books that I have finished and my recommendations. Hope it's helpful!


So I just finished this book and well, I don't even really know what to say about it. It's absolutely heartbreaking to read through. This is a memoir written by Nonna Bannister who was born in Russia and grew up in a wealthy family right before the second world war. The entire book is written from her childhood diaries along with notes and pictures that she kept with her throughout the war when she was taken from Russia and sent to Germany to live in prison camps and kept hidden until she translated them into English before her death in 2004.

The story starts with some background about her grandparents and parents and how her grandfather was a member of the Tsar's imperial guard and was executed by the Bolsheviks during the revolution. Her grandmother moves the rest of the family to a small town in Russia where they lived together until her mother left to attend college in St. Petersburg. Then her mother meets a Polish man and they get married, have Nonna and her brother Anatoly and live in various cities in southern Russia. Because of her father's job, Nonna's family is not affected too much by the initial effects of Stalin's rule in Russia and the rationing of food and important items, but once the war escalates, the family moves back in with her grandmother in the northern countryside.

The book continues through the loss of Nonna's family as the war escalates and her and her mother's move with the Germans out of Russia and into a labor camp where they work in various mills and factories. When she was younger, Nonna's father taught her 6 different languages and because of that, she and her mother gain more privileges than the other laborers and get to move around to different factories and eventually land in a hospital where they no longer have to live in the camp barracks. Nonna's mother is eventually sent to a concentration camp and at the end of the war, Nonna fights for her freedom from Germany and moves to America to begin a new life.


I'm not really big into WW2 history but I really enjoyed this story and was moved by Nonna and the trials she went through. I can't imagine what that kind of life would have been like or even how you could build a normal life for yourself afterward but I'm glad that she was able to share her story with her family and with the rest of the world.

What frustrates me is the fact that we need these stories to educate people on what actually happened during the war. It amazes me that there are some people who refuse to believe that the Holocaust actually happened and I'm not sure if they do that either out of ignorance or the childish belief that humans could never be that cruel to each other. I don't understand how they can justify writing off survivors stories as fiction or lies and concentration camp sites and pictures as Hollywood's creation. Either way, I hope more people read this book and others like it and that it opens peoples eyes to the fact that these things actually happened and hundreds of thousands of people died and families were destroyed.


Anyway, off of the negative stuff. It's a great book and I really enjoyed reading it. The style of writing, from her diaries, makes it feel like you're actually having a conversation with her. The vivid descriptions and images make you feel like you're with her, experiencing her life through her eyes. You can almost see and smell the delicious food that her family prepares for their big Christmas feast and you can almost feel the cold seep into your bones when you read about how they survived a brutal winter in Russia with very little food and wood for fires.

I would recommend actually buying the real paper version of the book because it contains pictures of Nonna's family, her diaries, the pillow that she hid all of her belongings with her in during the war and other things that add to the story. She writes about how it was important to hide her diaries, photos, letters and memorabilia because it was proof of the Holocaust and the atrocities that were committed by the Germans. The Kindle version was sadly lacking and I wish that I had purchased the actual book.

If you do decide to read it, I hope you enjoy it! It's a great story of one woman's survival, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually, through tragedies that none of us can ever imagine living through. She comes through it with grace, forgiveness and love and I believe that's an important lesson for everyone. Even though her entire family was taken away from her at a young age, she still had the grace to forgive her tormentors and to love and cherish her family, husband and children through her long life.

Read it and let me know what you think!