The Arabian Nights - Author Unknown, as translated by Husain Haddawy

             The Arabian Nights is an unknown classic.  A book that should have its cover opened as often as Hamlet. As the door and window to much of the unknown, this novel has many incredible points that not only makes it an academically fascinating novel, but a novel anyone can enjoy.  The first thing to be mentioned is the aspect of storytelling.  The book is a literal page turner because the novel focuses so beautifully on the aspect of storytelling.  While you may not be enthralled with the actual story; you will be motivated to turn the page and continue reading if only because the story you are reading requires an end.  Built into the general story is this matter.  In order for our narrator, Shahrazad, to stay alive she must keep a solid level of anticipation to simply live one more day.  Of course the beauty of this story is that Shahrazad is not telling stories so she may not die, but so others do not have to die because of her continued life.  The stories are already built around anticipation and they are done so in a marvelous way.  

            No other novel I have read has been able to keep a level of anticipation throughout an entire book in such a simple but beautiful way.  Then we come to the actual stories themselves.  The stories are simple, folk tales.  We may even be able to find a similar tale from our childhood or our religion.  Any person can keep up with these stories as they are masterfully simple.  What may not be realized right away is what is beyond the simplicity of these stories.  Behind each story is a piece to a culture, a people, a religion, something that has seemingly become a dead mystery.  We are able to see an entire ancient world open before our eyes.  This novel has no author because no one author could re-create an entire culture on their own.  I find myself at a loss of words for the entity of what these stories create for all who open the pages and read.  It is something that can only be understood through the reading of this novel.         

          This novel was not written recently, in fact, it is based on a 14th century manuscript.  What you may hold in your hands if you choose to is the essence of life as it was and the meaning and background behind so many other texts that came after it.  If I can give any piece of advice it is that you should not wait until you are required to read this text, it can be read in so many different ways.  You should enjoy as you see fit, because tomorrow you can pick the book up and read it a different way and continue to see the mastery behind every story and every page. 

~Amy Widman~

All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein

          I have found it to be true that one of the pinnacle reasons so many of us are drawn toward literature is that we find a common spark of humanity igniting on the pages below our eyes, and it is there, in that revelation, that we are bought and sold all at the same time to this ideal. We realize that through the written word, someone else’s story can have a significant impact on our own. Not every book has this voice. Not every author can speak with it. Gerda Weissmann Klein, however, summons it in All But My Life.

         All But My Life is a memoir of a girl in her teens during the Holocaust being taken first from her home, then from her family, until she is left quite literally with only her life. As Gerda tells her story, there is courage, hope, contemplation of suicide, miraculous triumph, and great love. She tells of her parents love as they talked on the last night they were ever to be together. She tells of the horrors of a death march from Germany to Czechoslovakia, when a group of 2,000 girls slowly became 150, and when her dearest childhood friend died in her arms a week before being liberated. 
When I finished this book, I began to wonder why more books don’t carry such an impact. But not every author has a story to tell like Gerda’s, and Gerda makes it her duty to tell the stories of those forgotten in mass graves, ditches, and crematoria. 
        All But My Life doesn’t look for sympathy, and it doesn’t raise a loud noise for us to take into account the atrocities of the past. Rather, it sits us down and tells us of things that happened, and inspires us with the courage and hope that overcame it all. Gerda was left to tell her story and the stories of others who no longer can. Stories that ended lost—obscure in the vast population of the dead, but remembered and quickened once again so that they might never be forgotten. 

~Kevin Kaminski~