Started reading this book with a very positive attitude - the issue was serious and important, the stage presented in a convincing way. And then scratches appeared, most disturbing was a very authoritative, someway pretentious style of writing. This was followed by many inconsistencies and omissions in the plot. Only respect to the two main characters in the book kept me turning pages to the end.
Dramatic story of a family caught in a vortex of the II World War. On 1 September 1939 Poland has been attacked from the West by Germany, this event started the war. On 17 September Poland has been attacked by Soviet Union - this move has been previously agreed in a secret Molotov - Ribbentrop agreement. Few months after the invasion Soviet authorities deported from occupied territory to Siberia and Kazakhstan some 600,000 Polish citizens. Among them was the author of the book - Wiesio (Wesley) with his mother, brother and sister. Their father/husband was away, he joined Polish Army when the war started, it took few years before they learned his fate. I found the book quite exceptional, it has been written from the perspective of 8 y.o. boy. It may be some kind of disappointment for readers who expected to find stories written by adults rationally explaining what was happening around them. Wiesio relies completely on his own memory and on what mother or sibling told him. His experiences are very limited - mother decided not to send him to the Communist school so he spends whole days just wandering around a hut in which they are living, he has no company other than an old man nearing his death. Fortunately I read some other stories covering these events so I could enjoy a company of very young boy telling me about his passage through the hell.
Initially I liked this book very much. The style, dialogs, surprising associations. Further in the book I found some quite naive motifs - mostly those touching science and religion. Not only naive, also angry. Plus lots and lots extreme exaggerations, arrogance. Mostly beautiful woman, most clever man, same applies to the dog and to the daughter. Actually I felt very sorry for her - child without childhood. Finally - on one hand I liked descriptions of TV Shows, on the other one I was confused with a number of contradictory situations and number of manila envelopes sent in many directions. One more points - the story of Calvin Evans childhood, in my opinion, went completely off the rails. At that stage I gave this book 3 stars. After few days I cooled down and thought about it as the author making a joke. I raised rating to 4 stars. P.S. I learned that the book has been converted to a TV serial, what is interesting - Harriet, the neighbour is black. I cannot believe that her husband- a monster, could be black in the movie.
I learned about this game from my son during my hospital stay - early 2023.
After a few random games and losses, I thought about the method.
I was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's story - The Gold Bug - in which treasure hunters have to decipher an encrypted document. They come up with the idea to base it on the statistics of the frequency of letters in English words. I found information that the top letters used in the English language are E, T, A, I, N, O, S.
I decided to start with the word P-R-I-C-E.
The New York Times advised that a better word would be S-T-A-L-E, but the English word still smelled somehow stale to me, I preferred to know the price.
I will explain the rules of the game -
You have to guess a 5-letter word in 6 attempts.
After each attempt, NYT marks in black the letters that do not appear in the target word, in yellow the letters that appear but in a different position, and in green - the letters that appear in the given position.
In the given example, the situation was dramatic, two attempts and not a single letter.
After three words I could see that I was doing badly, it put me in a sour mood - I became jazzy - and that was the point.
I was very charmed with first chapters of the book, could not believe it was written by a non Russian with rather short experience living in Russia. Siberian winter, hopelessness of woman's life in a small village in the middle of the forest. Hopeless men expecting full service at home and spending all free time drinking "rocket fuel" in a local bar. Among this a young woman working hard as a railway engineer which mostly means walking long kilometres checking railway switches and signals. Free time she spends caring for neighbours and old family members and only then finds some space for cherishing her dreams about study and becoming a writer. Then - the title obliges - threats, murder, blackmail, corruption, CRIME. Very quickly I got completely lost among many characters and subplots and did not bother to track the sense of the story.
Only the climate remained with me.
Last Friday in Melbourne leading daily paper Herald Sun one could notice this...
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Rugby on water - it looks like this..
In a small pool, two 5-person teams fight without hesitation for the ball. The goal is to throw it into a basket similar to a basketball. In my opinion, it is not rugby, but rather basketball in kayaks, although sometimes it is fierce - see HERE.
What possessed me to write about this?
This amazing duo - our daughter-in-law and granddaughter - visited us yesterday.
This young company is clearly ageing me, so I'll go back 22 years.
Year 2002 - Sarah - our daughter-in-law - qualified to the Australian team for the Canoe-Polo World Championships in Essen - Germany.
It was for this occasion that I bought this T-shirt - it survived these 22 years better than I did.
The Australians won the bronze medal - Germany won, Poland - 17th place.
That same year I also had the opportunity to try this sport.
The occasion was our daughter's wedding - the daughter-in-law organised a match - Milewski Family vs. The Rest of the World.
The family team consisted of the Bride and Groom, Daughter-in-Law and Son and... me.
As expected, after a few minutes I fell into the water.
Here I will explain that kayaks are equipped with a protective skirt, so after capsizing, water does not flow into the kayak and the competitor can easily do an underwater somersault - CLICK.
Well, maybe not so easily - I couldn't twist out, which complicated matters a bit because to get out of the kayak underwater you had to unfasten the protective skirt and crawl out of the kayak upside down.
Anyway, I survived, I was replaced by a reserve player and I could calmly watch the rest of the game. The Rest of the World (Monash University team) won 7:2.
2 years later our daughter-in-law gave birth to a child, then three more and I thought the whole thing would remain in the realm of memories.
But no, last year Sarah felt the call of youth and resumed training, her daughter Matylda joined her. This year both qualified for the Australian national team for the world championships - the mother in the senior team, the daughter in the junior team.
In October they will go to the championships in Dequing - China - CLICK.
P.S. Update - World Championships are over - 10 days of hard time - 9 hours of competition for 8 days, Australian Women Team (Sarah) ended in 14th position, Australian Women U21 Team (Matilda) in 7th position.
The Paris Housekeeper by Renee Ryan
When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption by Wesley Adamczyk
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood
Death on the Trans-Siberian Express by C.J. Farrington
