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James Herriot saves a dog! - All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot

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Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I feel like I've been talking a lot about Sarah Helm's book, If This Is A Woman and I've kind of been neglecting some of my other books that I've been reading so today, I'm going to talk about James Herriot. If you don't know already, I'm reading his second memoir, All Things Bright and Beautiful because I really liked his first book and I thought that I would delve into the second. We all know the challenges of being a vet. Especially a Yorkshire country vet like James. Sometimes you have to separate you social life at home, with your working life on farms. This can be very difficult because sometimes country vets get called in the middle of the night to deliver a calf and they have to work during the day to treat a large cattle group for husk. It can be very strenuous work. One thing that I would find the most difficult is when it comes to helping everyday stray pets. On his way back from a farm on...

Inward terror, Sarah Helm, If This Is A Woman

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, If you follow my main blog, Keeping Up With Juliette, you will know that I've been wanting to talk about this topic of inward terror in a concentration camp for a while now. I know that I keep going on about this book and I promise that I'll be talking about some more of James Herriot's second book later on next week but I think it's really good to touch base on this topic. This book is so incredible because I keep on finding new things to talk about as I go through it which is a rarity for a lot of books that I read. If you've never done GCSE history before in the past, then you may not know about the prospect of inward terror within a concentration camp. The Nazis used this form of terror to ignite anger amongst the prisoners themselves so that they were the ones being violent and the Nazis were the ones who didn't have to do anything. If you haven't seen my previous post, then you won't know a...

The shocking truth on how people were treated in concentration camps- If This Is A Woman

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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...

First impressions of If This Is A Woman by Sarah Helm

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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...

First impressions of Call of the Wild by Jack London

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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...

Noel Fitzpatrick's book, Becoming The Supervet book review

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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...

What is my favourite book genre and why? Ranting Tuesdays

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...

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