The Book Hub 📙🐻

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, As I've mentioned in my previous post, I'm currently reading a very interesting historical book called If This Is A Woman by Sarah Helm. Whilst it's a very accurate and fascinating book on Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, it does reveal some shocking truths on how people were treated. Drawn to the 'red Vienna,' a woman named Hanna Sturm, joined a trade union and helped fight anti-fascist battles during Austria's turmoil of the 1930s. However, this often lead her being imprisoned behind bars. Sentenced to 'aggravated arrest' in Ravensbrück, Hanna was confined to a small wooden cell which was 2 metres wide and 2 metres in length. The cell was dark so whilst she tried to get used to the darkness, she often lost track of time. She also had no bed, no mattress but the floor to sit on and only a proper meal was provided on Thursday once a week. 100g of bread and a bowl of so-called coffee was gi...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, If you follow me on Instagram and my main blog, Keeping Up With Juliette,than you will know that back at the start of April I went on a history trip with my school to Berlin. On my trip there, I visited Sachsenhausen former concentration camp where I bought the book If This Is A Woman by Sarah Helm, at one of their book stores there. After reading the first few pages of this book, I realised that Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp for male prisoners. I believe that Sarah Helm wrote another book called If This Is A Man which talks about that particular camp whereas her other book talks specifically about Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for women. So far, I'm finding it really interesting. I never really read the prologue of books but I decided to do so this time since it seemed interesting and I wanted to get some context. Helm talks about how it was really difficult for her to get the information she needed for her book be...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Recently, I just finished reading Noel Fitzpatrick's book, Becoming The Supervet so I decided that I would start reading a book that my grandmother got me for Christmas and that is Call Of The Wild by Jack London. It actually comes with a second book which is White Rang but I'll be reading that next. So far, I'm not the biggest fan of Call of the Wild. I mostly don't like the way it's written because it is written in the perspective of the St Bernard and Scottish Collie cross-breed, Buck. The beloved dog gets stolen from his pampered life in California and shipped to Klondike to work as a sledge dog during the time of the Gold Rush. Whilst this is an interesting topic to base a fictional story on, he fact that it's all written in the perspective of Buck, kind of personifies the dog too much and you just end up losing all the emotion. It does highlight a lot of serious topics since Buck does unfortunately g...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Recently, I finished reading Professor Noel Fitzpatrick's book, Becoming The Supervet. Honestly, without a doubt, one of the most amazing books I think I've ever read in my life. That is a statement I don't say that often but in this case, it is generally true. When you look at who Noel's become now, without looking at the last fifty years of his life, you'd think that he's a very privileged person who's rich and has got a lot of practices across southern England. However, looking at his past, you'd actually realise that he's a person who's generally been through a lot. Without having read his book, I would have never realised that he was bullied for the whole of his 5 years in secondary school. He talks about being beaten up during school and also having his bike broken by his bullies on his way home from school. Without having read his book, I would have never realised that he actually st...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Before, I absolutely used to be a fan of fictional books. I really enjoyed the Jacqueline Wilson books as a child, especially Starring Tracy Beaker. I also really enjoyed The Famous Five by Enid Blyton growing up. I really enjoyed the suspense especially the one about where they are trapped in a room with smugglers. For a long time, fiction has always seemed to be my favourite book genre. However, when I started reading things like Anne Frank's diary or Helga's diary, both excellent true accounts from the Second World War, I got drawn to the world of non-fiction. I especially enjoyed reading about Arthur by Mikael Lindnord. I liked reading about how the helpless dog followed Mikael's Swedish adventure racing team all across the jungle to find a home. I also liked reading about Felix the railway cat and how he became a signified member of the station. I am currently reading James Herriot's book All Things Bright an...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  At the age of 12 years old, I read an amazing book called Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. In year 8, we did go over the book in English but I had already read it before. It took me a while to understand some things and I often found that I had to re-read some sections just to understand the old American slang but nevertheless, when I did got to grips with the language, I found the plot quite interesting. There are so many amazing chapters I could highlight from this book but there is just one that tops them all in my opinion. The final chapter has not only just got me awestruck, but I'm sure many of you readers out there too. It's the chapter when George has to shoot his companion Lennie, a tall muscular worker with learning difficulties, for his own good. I like this section in the book because it's prolonged and prior to Lennie's death, him and George talk about the future. 'Getting the alfalfa for the ra...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, A couple weeks ago, I did an assumptions post on James Herriot's second book. One of the things that I assumed would happen was that James would join the war. In fact he does. Only when I finished reading the first book did I realise that it said on the first page 'with the exception of his wartime service in the RAF.' This suggests that he had served in the war. However, in chapter 2 of the second book, he clearly states that he won't be talking about his time during the war since it's not a wartime story. I can understand why he didn't decide to write about it since that would take away from the other important aspects of his life such as helping the farm animals. I also assumed that James and Helen would be married and I was correct. In the last few chapters of the first book, they get married within a month! In the second book, they seem to be living happily despite James's late night shifts at 2 i...