#ghostly men

With the end of the year and holidays and other life events I have been a little behind, so here are the books I have finished reading in the last few weeks.

First: Invisible Chains: Shawn Hornbeck and the Kidnapping Case that Shook the Nation by Kristina Sauerwein. This book is about the horrible kidnapping case in Missouri where Shawn was abducted and held for four years while being abused physically, mentally, and sexually. Sauerwein does a decent job pulling from sources to provide the evidence for why this case was so traumatic and why it took so long for Shawn to be found even though it seemed he had numerous opportunities to escape. There was a lot of different psychological explanations, but those tended to be long winded and dragged the book out. It was enjoyable, but could have been edited down to more significant points.

Second: Ghostly Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York’s Greatest Hoarders by Franz Lidz. Short and entertaining. Lidz spends a lot of time talking about his uncles, who are also hoarders, but that’s because for as much excitement as the Collyer Brothers created there isn’t a lot of information about them. A few newspaper articles and some personal accounts were really all that has been written. It did make me go look at photos of their house and created a desire to clean more clutter out of my house. I enjoy Lidz way of writing so I borrowed his other book (My Four Uncles or something like that) and plan to read that soon.

Third: Grace’s Guide: The Art of Pretending to Be a Grown-Up by Grace Helbig. I am so not the audience that this book was intended for, and so I didn’t really enjoy it. I also had trouble getting Grace’s personality through print as it seems more harsh and off-putting on paper than on YouTube. A lot of her advice annoyed me and felt like it was bad advice to give to teens and young adults. Such as drinking when hung-over, you’re just going to end up being hung-over later in the day. I did appreciate the personal stories that were in the book, because Grace is a very private person on-line, so seeing that side of her was nice. I don’t plan to read her other book though, I don’t think I can handle any more of her in print.

Fourth: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmar. This book was fascinating. Jennifer Teege discovers that her birth mother is actually the daughter of Amon Goeth, terrible SS Leader of Plaszow concentration camp. The novel follows her discovery and reaction as she attempts to put this horrific discovery in her understanding of history and of herself and family. Sellmar interjects throughout the book to provide more information about the Holocaust and Goeth and Schindler’s participation. I knew a lot about this point in history, but I learned a lot too. Teege also discusses her travels before this knowledge and her understanding of Jewish culture from her time in Tel Aviv. Teege suffers from anxiety and depression, so there were times in her writing that I felt annoyed because she couldn’t get past a topic. (I understand mental health, I realize telling someone to get over it doesn’t work, that they can get trapped, and by writing this way the reader can also experience it, but as someone that was struggling with similar issues while reading, it became very difficult to keep reading about someone else’s mental problem.) I do encourage others to read this book, it was a great look at culture and history.