OK, I’m being melodramatic, and I didn’t complete the title. It should say…
Oh, no! I’ve forgotten how to read physical books.
So here’s what happened…
[spoiler title=”Do not click SHOW if you want the short version of this post.”]For some reason, and I’ve never admitted this before, I’ve never been motivated to read The Diary of a Young Girl.
This will come as a shock to people who know me well enough to know that I am a voracious reader of Holocaust literature. You’d think of all the books I’ve read, I would definitely have read one of the most well-known books about a young girl’s experience during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
For some reason, though, I just never bit.
I recently watched a movie based on the book, and then it finally dawned on my why I wasn’t interested in reading Anne Frank’s diary!
Many people are aware that the Frank family hid away for 25 months before they were betrayed, but not everyone recalls that after the family was sent off to the death camps only Otto Frank survived.
It was Otto Frank who brought his daughter’s diary to the world, and in the process of doing so he made many changes to what Anne originally wrote in its pages. He left out some things and he embellished others that didn’t show him in a positive light.
The person I really wanted to read about was Otto Frank. Anne was fourteen when the family went into hiding, so she really didn’t have any say in what happened, but Otto Frank orchestrated the entire venture.
How is it that his whole family perished in the death camps, but Otto Frank survived his experience and lived until 1980?
That question always intrigued me.
Anyway…
After watching the movie, I did a little searching on Amazon and found that Carol Ann Lee wrote an extensive biography about Otto Frank. It goes into detail about Otto’s life before, during and after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Anyway…
The book isn’t available in electronic format, and I really wanted to read it so I got it from my local library, and that’s when I discovered that I had to relearn how to read a physical book.[/spoiler]
I’ve been reading almost exclusively from my Kindle DX since I got it back in 2010, and my preferred place to read is in my bed each night before I go to sleep. The Kindle is flat and you click a button to turn the pages. With it’s cover, I can set it up in an upside-down “V” and read while I’m lying on my side.
Not so with a physical book.
I’ve been physical wrestling with The Hidden Life of Otto Frank for the last four days. I just can’t seem to find a comfortable position for lying down and reading this physical book, even though the content of the book is very interesting to me.
I can lie on my side and read one page, but when I have to move over to the second page I either have to switch sides or try to hold the book up so I can see the other page.
Switching sides is out of the question, since I read so quickly that I’ll be flip-flopping from side to side every two minutes, and holding the book up causes a cramp in my thumb.
Sigh.
I don’t know. I plan to read the book in its entirety, but I don’t think we’ll be friends when I’m done. 🙂
I can’t wait to get back to my Kindle.
Okay, balance your reading time between a physical book and your kindle. But hey, I do understand :-).
Thanks for reading, Mary.
Yes, it’s definitely different reading on a kindle versus a book. I do both because I still love books too much. But I stay away from hard cover books for exactly the reason you mentioned. They’re just too heavy to hold up in bed. So I have to wait longer for books to come out in paperback. It’s worth it to me.