I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: Halfway

I'm about halfway through I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and so far, it has been pretty hilarious. Basically, most of this book is about the stupid things Tucker and his friends do while drunk, primarily all the hot, and not-so hot girls they have sex with. They get into fights with other people, and each other, frequently, and one guy even ended up in jail one night.

My favorite thing about this book is all the one-liners he says. Here are a few of my favorites so far:

“Blowjobs . . . the sweet sounds of silence. The problem with oral sex is that it’s like writing. When done right, it’s amazing, but there are just so many ways it can go wrong, and when it goes wrong, it’s just not worth it,” (21).  

“Most guys are hard-up schmucks who couldn’t get laid in a monkey whorehouse with a bag of bananas,” (53). 

“Her makeup looks like it was applied with a shotgun,” (106). 

And because I love hockey, and hate the Red Wings:

“Whatever buddy, you’re wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey to a strip club, you obviously suck,” (112).

I've laughed out loud reading this book several times, which in turn, causes my coworkers to laugh at me and my "high-pitched giggle". Whatever. This book is funny and I definitely recommend reading it. If anything, you'll be thankful your life isn't as screwed up as his. And rest assured. I will be watching the movie after I'm finished with this book, and I'll let you all know how it is, although I've heard it's just as funny.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is available on Amazon.com:

  

Book Five

My next book is I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max. I'm pretty excited about this book. I've heard a lot of good things about it and that it's hilarious so I'm looking forward to reading it. It's a New York Times Bestseller. I've got high hopes for this book. I've read a few excerpts of it online and those were funny, so I'm hoping the whole book will be like that.

Here is reader feedback:

"I am completely baffled as to how you can congratulate yourself for being a womanizer and a raging drunk, or think anyone cares about an idiot like you. Do you really think that exploiting the insecurities of others while getting wasted is a legitimate thing to offer?"

"Thank you, thank you, thank you--for sharing with us your wonderful tales of drunken revelry, for teaching me what it means to be a man, for just existing so I know that there is another option; I too can say 'screw the system' and be myself and have fun. My life truly began when I inished reading your stories. now, when faced with a quandary about what course of action I should take, I just ask myself, 'What would Tucker do?'--and I do it, and I am a better man for it."

"I find it truly appalling that there are people in the world like you. You are a disgusting, vile, repulsive, repugnant, foul creature. Because of you, I don't believe in God anymore. No just God would allow someone like you to exist."

"I'll stay with God as my lord, but you are my savior. I just finished reading your brilliant stories, and I laughed so hard I almost vomited. i want to bring that kind of joy to people. You're an artist of the highest order and a true humanitarian to boot. I'm in both shock and awe at how much I want to be you."

"You are the coolest person I can even imagine existing. If you slept with my girlfriend, it'd make me love her more."

And here's a little about the author:

Tucker Max received his B.A. from the University of Chicago, where he graduated in 1998. He attended Duke Law School on an academic scholarship, where he graduated with a J.D. in 2001 (despite the fact that he neglected to buy any of his textbooks for his final two years and spent part of one semester--while still enrolled in classes--living in Cancun). Tucker is purportedly the reason Duke dropped from 7 to 11 in the USN&WR rainkings during his tenure. He currently lives in New York, and when he isn't drinking or fornicating, he writes for his website, tuckermax.com.

What Tucker has to say about himself:

"My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women that is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world."

If you've heard about this book, or if this is the first time and it sounds hilarious, you might as well just go out and get it, or order it from Amazon.com:

Sarah's Key: Final Review

I was a little disappointed in this book. I really didn’t like her writing style at all. There were many parts throughout the book that seemed poorly written. They didn’t make sense in my head and I’d have to reread them. The first couple times this happened, I figured it was just me not paying close attention to what I was reading. After a while I realized it’s not me; it’s her style. She worded things in ways that I never would, and most people wouldn’t.

The storyline was also disappointing for me. After a while it became really predictable. And much of the story had nothing to do with the events that took place in 1942 in France or Julia’s research on those events. A lot of it was about her marital and family problems and other personal issues. I would have preferred to have had more of the story focused in 1942 and on the research Julia did for the article she wrote. Julia’s boss tells her the story was nice, however he was curious as to what the French police would have said. She hadn’t thought to try to interview any of them or their families to see how they felt. Which, in my opinion, is poor journalism. As a journalist, you should look at all sides of a story, and she did not. And I think this says a lot about the author. It’s almost as if she was almost done with the book and realized she hadn’t thought to look into any of that, so she pinned it on Julia’s poor journalism. I think that reflects poor research on the author’s part. Hearing stories from the French police who either helped in conducting the roundup or worked at any of the camps would have been extremely interesting and it shouldn’t have been overlooked.

I did learn a lot from this book. There are a lot of dark secrets in France’s history that most people try very hard to hide, and they do a pretty darn good job of it. Most people, unless they were there or had relatives experience it don’t know anything about Velodrome d’Hiver. It isn’t something that is taught in your history classes, or in French classes. This book was a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea how involved the French police were in the Holocaust until I read this book, and then did some of my own research.

Every detail she used was fact in this book. Every place Julia visited for her research is a place that existed. There are monuments built in these places to honor those who were victims of the roundup. She gave several quotes throughout the book from those places, such as this one:

“To the 3,500 Jewish children torn from their parents, interned at Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, deported and exterminated at Auschwitz. Victims of the Nazis, buried at the graveyard of Beaune-la-Rolande,” (153).

What was heartbreaking to learn was the total disregard of many of these camps. At Beaune-la-Rolande, a technical school was built over it. The only signs of the camp are the small monument with the words above written on it and the cemetery farther down from the school. At Drancy, there are people actually living in the buildings that were there at the camp. They had been built as a residential community and were then used for an internment camp. Not even ten years later, people began living in those buildings. Many of the monuments and memorials place the blame solely on the Nazis, even though the French police were the men who tore these families from their homes, locked them in the stadium, shipped them off to the camps, tore mothers away from their children, and sent them to their certain death at Auschwitz.

There is so much we still don’t know about the events that took place during the Holocaust, and there is so much we don’t know because it is not taught. People need to know what happened there. People need to be aware of the horrible events that took place. If we don’t teach our children these things, how can we prevent them from happening again? Zakhor. Al Tichkah. Remember. Never forget. 

Okay, so like I’ve said, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book. I just wanted more and more information on the Velodrome d’Hiver and the roundups. It was informative though, and urged me to do more research to learn more, and I hope all of you will do the same, even if you just look it up on Google. I pretty much disliked everything else about this book. The plot could have been better. Her descriptions could have been better. Her characters could have been better. I just really didn’t like her writing in general. Overall, I’m still going to give this one a flavored coffee with sugar and cream (3) rating, primarily because I did learn a lot from this book. And any book you can learn something new from is worth reading.

As always, if you're interested in reading this book for yourself, you can find it on Amazon.com:

Velodrome d'Hiver: Operation Spring Breeze

As promised, I decided to do some research on my own. I found some interesting things that I hadn't already learned from Sarah's Key. I looked at a few different websites, found a book that included excerpts of letters written from the head of French police and the Germans making the orders from the roundup.


I started with Wikipedia. It's not the best source for reliable information, but I like to start there, because it's a good place to get ideas of other things to search for.
Here's the link for Velodrome d'Hiver on Wikipedia for some basic information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel'_d'Hiv_Roundup


I work in a library, so I figured I might as well see what kind of books we have on the topic. The best one I found is The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Germany and France
This is the book that has letters in it between French and German officers. It also includes pictures of the camps, specifically Drancy, as well as pictures of a few of the memorials and a museum. There is an entire section of the book devoted to Vel' d'Hiv specifically, and another section for Drancy. I'd definitely recommend this one for anyone looking to learn more about the Holocaust, specifically it's execution in France. You can probably find this in your local library, but it's also available on Amazon.com:








I also read a survivor's story which was really touching. Unfortunately it was the only one I was able to find online. There are probably a lot more out there, but I'm fairly certain that there are very few survivor stories from the Jews of Vel' d'Hiv'. Here's her story:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3942285,00.html






Around the same time Madeleine Testyler told her story, a movie was made about the roundup in Paris called La Rafle. This is available on Netflix, but only on DVD. I'm not sure if it's available in video stores, but it is available on Amazon.com as well:



La Rafle is a 2010 French film. From the Vélodrome D'Hiver, where 13,000 Jews are crammed, to the camp of Beaune-La-Rolande, from Vichy to the terrace of the Berghof, La Rafle follows the real destinies of the victims and the executioners. Of those who orchestrated it all. Of those who trusted them. Of those who fled. Of those who opposed them. Every character in this film has existed. Every event, even the most extreme, transpired on that summer of 1942.












Letters from Drancy is an article I found online. It has several letters written from one woman to her sister as well as others. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/18/worlddispatch.jonhenley

I also found a 60th anniversary commemoration speech (July, 2002): http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Commemoration-of-the-60th

I was unable to find President Jaques Chirac's speech in its entirety from July 21, 1995 when he publicly addressed France's role in the Holocaust. I did find an article someone wrote about it, and it includes many of the important parts of Chirac's speech, as well as commentary from other Eurpoean diplomats.
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/1322/chirac-hailed-for-citing-france-s-role-in-holocaust/

I hope you all find this information helpful and useful, and if you happen to do any research of your own and find anything interesting, let me know!

Thanks for reading!

Sarah's Key: Halfway

Finally, I made it halfway through this book. It was a lot more difficult to get into than I had anticipated, and then we had that awesome holiday weekend in there, so needless to say I didn't get a lot of reading done. There are many things I really like about this book, and several things I really dislike about it.

First, I love Paris, and I love the French language, and I love learning about World War II. So it's got that going for it. Julia describes why she attracted to Paris and she says, "It was during my adolescence that I felt the first yearnings for France, an insidious fascination that grew stronger with the passage of time. Why France? Why Paris? The French language had always attracted me. I found it softer, more sensual than German, Spanish, or Italian," (45). Listening to French is one of my favorite things to do. It's so elegant. I took several years of French. I love the language. I love listening to people speak it and I love reading it. And there are quite a few French words thrown in there. I love that I understand them and how beautiful they look.

I've learned a lot of things about WWII from this book that I didn't know. And if it's as she says in the book, it's not something that is documented in a lot of books, nor is it taught in French schools (or any schools for that matter). Julia is a journalist for an American magazine in Paris and she's doing an article on the Velodrome d'Hiver which was the Nazi-ordered but French police-enforced roundup of the Jews in Paris. At the site where the Velodrome in Paris used to stand, there is a small plaque that reads:

"On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Velodrome d'Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget!" 

So the book alternates between Julia's story of uncovering the mysteries behind the Vel' d'Hiv' and Sarah's story, a little girl and her family that were part of the roundup in Paris and were shipped to camps in Paris. I won't tell you much more than that, because that would probably ruin a lot of the story for you. But the things Sarah sees and experiences are sickening as one can imagine. And the information Julia finds out about the roundup--including how her husband's family is tied in to all of it is equally sickening, as well as interesting, and really, just sad. This isn't a book to lift one's spirits.

That said, there are many things I really, really, dislike about this book. Poor sentence structure and syntax. It sounds like it was written for 8th graders, and heck, maybe it was. I don't know. But I don't like it. And she has numerous sentences such as this: "I came to live in Paris when I was a little over twenty, after graduating from Boston University with an English major," (45). I cringe every time I read sentences like that. It just sounds...weird, like no one would talk that way. People don't say they graduated "with an English major". I graduated with a lot of English majors. And we all got to sit together at commencement too! Most people would say they graduated with their bachelor's in English.

On top of poor syntax and sentence structure, this book just lacks description and imagery, and I feel like it could really benefit from that. Her writing just lacks almost everything I love about writing. The use of figurative language to describe something. This description in particular was just awful: "We entered the apartment, fumbled with light switches. Nothing happened. Antoine opened a couple of shutters. The sun poured in. The rooms were bare, dusty," (20). She could have done so much more with this, using similes to describe what those things were like. Everything just seems really uncreative and straightforward and often her word choices just seem too light for the subject matter we're dealing with here. I expected things to be a lot deeper, and I was greatly disappointed in that aspect.

One other pet peeve. Sarah is referred to as "the girl" for almost the entire first half of the book. And even after her name is revealed to be Sarah Starzynski, she is still called "the girl". Sure, it's fairly safe to assume from the beginning that this girl suffering through all these horrible nightmares is Sarah from the beginning. But it's extremely annoying to have to read the first half of the book for that to be confirmed.

In all, I really don't know how I feel about this book so far. I love all of the new things I'm learning from it. I hate a lot of other things, like her writing style. As of now, I'd still recommend people read it. I'm very picky when it comes to liking a writing style, so you might enjoy this a lot more than I have so far. I've learned a lot about the roundup--things I had no idea even happened. And I'm a firm believer in educating people in all the details, no matter how disturbing, sickening. If people are educated, cruelty such as this can be prevented. So, if you're like me and you've never heard of the Velodrome d'Hiver, I'd recommend reading Sarah's Key, just for the information it has about the roundup. Or at least just google it and see what you find. I might even make another post with what I find so if any of you are interested in learning about it, you can check it out.
Sarah's Key is available on Amazon.com: