Fantasy is often the kind of genre that can get away with having a slower, more drawn-out and intricate plot. No, it's more that I think the premise is fundamentally flawed and I just could not get past it.
It must be me, though, because I have only seen one other reviewer comment on the issues I had. The Reader is supposed to be about a society where reading doesn't exist. Reading is, as the blurb states, "unheard of".
But when Sefia's aunt Nin is kidnapped, the only clue to what is going on is "The Book" that her father left behind before he was murdered. So Sefia sets about deciphering the book, and searching for her aunt with the help of a mute boy called Archer. Firstly, though, it's simply not true that these people don't read. They do. Just think about what it would really mean to have a society that didn't read at all. And, as it happens, this society does just that.
Symbols e. What this book seems to mean when it says that people don't read is that they don't read the English Latin alphabet, a descendant of the Greek alphabet.
For a book that is so culturally and racially diverse, it's disappointing to see reading defined in such narrow parameters. Secondly - and I am so confused by this that I genuinely wonder if I somehow missed an explanation - how does a girl who has grown up in a society where reading doesn't exist simply look at a book and teach herself to read?
How can she possibly see a picture of the letter "B" and know it makes a "buh" sound? I'm not being rhetorical - did I miss an explanation of how this is possible? The world itself is standard fantasy , with a heroine who could be any other YA fantasy heroine, and the usual combination of assassins, thieves, pirates and romance.
I can't name a single interesting thing about Sefia to set her apart from the rest. Another thing - people are getting really excited about the promise of pirates. Fair enough. But I'm starting to realize that I maybe don't love pirates as much as I think I do.
I seem to conjure up an image of the old-fashioned, alcoholic "Yo Ho" Jack Sparrow kind of pirates. Truth is, that's just romanticism, and they're actually just a bunch of rebellious sailors. So, as well as the fundamental flaws with the concept, I didn't connect with any of the characters, I found it so slow lots of stories within the story, which quickly became boring and one of the big reveals feels like a rip-off of The Neverending Story Also - and it pains me to say this - the obsession with "The Book" here is, frankly, a little weird.
And yes, I freaking love books, but it's so crazy intense it's borderline comical. Like maybe you'll get it if you're the kind of person who sits alone in a dark room, stroking your books.
I guess the book briefly mentions her parents sounding out the letters on her toy blocks when she was young. I'm still skeptical of her ability to suddenly turn this into actual reading, but at least her reading skills didn't just appear from nowhere. Re-read on audio so I can read second book! So, wow - how do I write this review?! So this world of Kelanna doesn't have books!
Who are these people? There is a whole story thing about it, but I got a little confused so don't ask me. A what? What's a book? Or as someone asked in this story, "What's a buck? There are people looking for Nin because she's the most notorious thief in the Five Islands, they call her the Locksmith. Sefia's mom was killed years ago and then her dad was killed and they had this set up what Sefia was to do if that happened.
I feel really bad for Sefia seeing her father dead because the people in this book do some nasty killings. Sefia took something she found hidden in their home when she made her escape to her aunt Nin.
What was that something? A Book! Later on Nin gets caught by said people looking for her and Sefia has to fend for herself for a few years while hunting these people and hoping to find her aunt still alive and get revenge for her parents.
The problem with being 'the best' is that the criterion for being best has to be set by someone with authority. The self-identity of the best depends on this. To reject this classification and the criteria that define it, one also must reject the authority that sanctioned it.
This authority is so diffuse throughout society, that to reject it means to reject the entire society. The loss of both identity and context for establishing a new identity is the ultimate disorder, chaos. Jean Korelitz, for example, herself a former admissions officer for Princeton, shows how pervasive the CPE is in the steps before entering the corporate world in her novel, Admission. Princeton's 'pitch' to applicants is exactly the same as that of the Wall Street firms to its applicants: "As the best, you will want to stay among the best, so apply to Princeton.
The message doesn't vary: "We are the best and will help you stay among the best. And it is systematically defended even by those whom it excludes. The effects of CPE extend beyond those who are certifiably, as it were, the best to those who aspire to become part of the elite.
Deficiencies are masked by the aspiration itself, which is merely the acceptance of the defining authority. I can say with a moral certainty that all three of my acquaintances have what are, to them, equivalent to Hanna's secret deficiencies.
Fear of exposure is therefore a powerful motivation to keep the system going, to promote its stable orderliness even when it is so evidently destructive. Schlink's narrator, Michael Berg, knows that Hanna could not have committed the crimes she is accused of because of the secret she is unwilling to reveal. She may be guilty but not as guilty as she appears, or of what she is charged with. What duty does he have to unlock the door with which she has imprisoned herself?
To speak up, either to her or the court, would expose her to profound shame, greater shame even than that of being found guilty of war crimes perhaps. And if he does decide to speak up, how should he do it - to her?
To her lawyer? To the judge? I feel the same dilemmas in advising my acquaintances, knowing that any mis-step could provoke yet more consternation as well as a pointed lack of gratitude for my solicited but still impertinent advice.
Berg's father, a philosopher, advises a simple ethical rule: don't try to second guess the criterion of the good that an individual has established for himself. This is useless advice. It simply anoints conformity as the ethical norm. Conformity is the opposite of resistance, a capacity for which is essential to avoid personal co-optation, to either totalitarianism or corporatism. Resistance which can take many forms. All of them dangerous because they challenge order and the power behind order.
And all demand apparently un-virtuous behaviour. How can one advise such a course to anyone one cares about? Ultimately Berg fails to act at all. I find myself in Berg's position. I feel any advice I can give is vapid. To suggest resistance against a corporate culture that is so pervasive and so domineering is madness. I can only ask the question "Best is the superlative for what?
I am as trapped as anyone else. Will the children of my acquaintances, or my own, look at the lives of their parents with the same dismay as the so-called second generation of German children perceived their parents after ?
Schlink's story ends in tragic sadness and unresolved guilt. Perhaps no other ending is possible. View all 85 comments. View all 70 comments. Feb 18, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction , war , german , literature , 20th-century , historical. The story is told in three parts by the main character, Michael Berg. Each part takes place in a different time period in the past. After year-old Michael becomes ill on his way home, year-old tram conductor Hanna Schmitz notices him, cleans him up, and sees him safely home.
He spends the next three months absent from school battling hepatitis. Part 2 , Six years later, while attending law school, Michael is part of a group of students observing a war crimes trial.
A group of middle-aged women who had served as SS guards at a satellite of Auschwitz in occupied Poland are being tried for allowing Jewish women under their ostensible "protection" to die in a fire locked in a church that had been bombed during the evacuation of the camp. The incident was chronicled in a book written by one of the few survivors, who emigrated to the United States after the war; she is the main prosecution witness at the trial. Part 3 , Years have passed, Michael is divorced and has a daughter from his brief marriage.
He is trying to come to terms with his feelings for Hanna, and begins taping readings of books and sending them to her without any correspondence while she is in prison. Hanna begins to teach herself to read, and then write in a childlike way, by borrowing the books from the prison library and following the tapes along in the text.
She writes to Michael, but he cannot bring himself to reply. After 18 years, Hanna is about to be released, so he agrees after hesitation to find her a place to stay and employment, visiting her in prison.
On the day of her release in , she commits suicide and Michael is heartbroken. Michael learns from the warden that she had been reading books by many prominent Holocaust survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, and histories of the camps. The warden, in her anger towards Michael for communicating with Hanna only by audio tapes, expresses Hanna's disappointment.
Hanna left him an assignment: give all her money to the survivor of the church fire. View all 12 comments. I have the feeling there's more than one way of looking at this book. On one hand it can be viewed as a bildungsroman , it follows Michael Berg since the age of 15 till full maturity. On the other hand, it's the post-war German generation coming to terms with their past, the Nazi crimes and their parents' guilt.
Guilt, actually, is a recurring theme in the novel: Hanna is guilty of war crimes, Michael is guilty for betrayal plus he feels guilty for having loved Hanna and asks himself if that mak I have the feeling there's more than one way of looking at this book. Guilt, actually, is a recurring theme in the novel: Hanna is guilty of war crimes, Michael is guilty for betrayal plus he feels guilty for having loved Hanna and asks himself if that makes him a criminal as well , Michael's father for not being enough of a father.
The question you get stuck with, after reading, is Hanna's question addressed to the judge: "What would you have done? On a bohemian level, the novel is about love for books and reading, so that's a plus for bookworms View all 5 comments.
I'm not really sure why this book is considered one of the best books of all time and managed to make into the big list. Most of the time, even if I don't like a book, I tend to understand why someone else picked it. In this case, I'm rather clueless. Is it, perhaps, that people see in it some message about humanity when Hanna won't purchase her freedom with the secret she has kept hidden for years?
Is it the vivid sexual tale of a teenage boy with an older woman? Are we supposed to be shoc I'm not really sure why this book is considered one of the best books of all time and managed to make into the big list.
Are we supposed to be shocked by it? The novel starts with a romance when fifteen year old Michael finds himself ill on the way home from school and is taken in by a woman twice his age. They begin an affair which is described by numerous critics as "erotic". This was the first hurdle my enjoyment came up against. When I was fifteen with raging hormones and an extremely good-looking history teacher, I would probably have been able to appreciate the eroticism of such an opportunity - to have an illicit affair with someone much older and experienced.
But that's just a bunch of teenage fantasies that would never have become realities. Now, it creeps me out. I couldn't see it as a love story, I saw it as being about an adult who takes advantage of a child all very ironic when I think about my first interpretation of Lolita , but I guess I grew up somewhat. It has been suggested that we are expected to draw parallels between Hanna's secret and the behaviour of most German people during the second world war, that is why Schlink deliberately set the novel in this fragile post-war period.
But I'm really not a fan of stories that are one big metaphor for something else I refuse to believe in metaphors that have been proposed by some random critic and then jumped on by everyone else. I'm trying not to give away Hanna's secret in case there are people who haven't worked it out straight away, but I wasn't buying into this metaphor.
This combined with the author's sparse tone quickly distanced me from the novel. I just prefer interesting and complex characters, an engaging plot, relationships I care about I prefer all this over metaphor. In the end, metaphor is subjective and if I can't see it myself without someone else suggesting it to me then I believe either the author failed to make their metaphorical point clearly enough or the metaphor itself doesn't exist. View all 17 comments.
This is the deep character development and type of writing that i've been craving. A book that made me think and ask so many questions. Sometimes I felt like I was struggling through really heavy writing, but the actual story itself and the moral questions that arise from its telling were really, really interesting and I surprised myself with how much I found myself contemplating this novel.
Someone told me there's a movie with Kate Winslet and she is my actual wife so i'm gonna go track that do This is the deep character development and type of writing that i've been craving. Someone told me there's a movie with Kate Winslet and she is my actual wife so i'm gonna go track that down bye View all 8 comments.
There are some books you know will stay with you forever, and Bernhard Schlink's The Reader is definitely one of them. It has been highly critically acclaimed, winning the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, and it deserves all the praise it has received. The Holocaust is a difficult, though much covered, subject matter, and this novel has a sure touch and an appealing lack of judgment with it.
The story begins in the world of almost-childhood of fifteen-year-old Michael Berg, recovering fr There are some books you know will stay with you forever, and Bernhard Schlink's The Reader is definitely one of them. The story begins in the world of almost-childhood of fifteen-year-old Michael Berg, recovering from a summer of hepatitis, begins a relationship with Hanna, a much older woman he meets by chance.
The first part of the novel, untouched by the shadow of the recent war or Germany's disturbed and dangerous past, deals with Michael and Hanna's burgeoning relationship, and the little fears and worries that can make up one big problem.
Eventually, as we know it must, their relationship ends and Hanna moves away. When the book moves on to the second part, the tone has changed considerably. Michael, now a law student, attends the trial of female Nazi war criminals. To his shock, one of them is Hanna, who had been a camp guard at Auschwitz. I won't say more for fear of spoiling it for you, but the Holocaust is seriously considered in the light of philosophy and moral responsibility.
There is an attitude that one becomes numb to the horror of it all if too exposed to it, and this book does not go into ghastly detail, but rather examines even more painful details: who was to blame, how do we live with the suffering, how can one atone, and most of all, what is the next generation to do? It also looks at what it means to love someone, how much we can accept of them and how blind we can be to those we love. Love, guilt and betrayal feature prominently in this novel.
In many ways Hanna was innocent, and yet it becomes apparent that she lived every day with terrible guilt; Michael was a victim of her actions, and yet he too is guilty by association. The reader of the title is Michael, who read to Hanna during the early part of the relationship; the reader is Hanna, alone in prison occupying herself by learning about the experiences of camp inmates. The reader is selected individuals in the camps who read aloud to Hanna, and may have died because of it.
But most of all, the reader is ourselves; the title points the finger at us, because now we have the knowledge, what should we do with it? If all it takes for evil to prevail is for the good to remain silent, then how innocent are any of us? And how can we deal with the subsequent guilt? There are so many layers to this subtly complex novel that having just finished it, I have to start it again.
The transforming power of words is negated by their ultimate futility, and actions in this novel speak deafeningly loud. If we have a responsibility towards the past, to learn from it, and I believe we do, then this book will help us to go some way towards fulfilling it.
View all 13 comments. This novel breaks so many taboos, it is hard to know where to start reflecting on it. And yet, its plot is not unrealistic or uncommon.
It is about a sexual relationship between a young man and an older woman. It is about illiteracy and shame. It is about crimes against humanity, committed out of helplessness and an egocentric wish to hide one's own weakness. It is about the Holocaust weighing on the shoulders of post Germany's population. It is about the past being reshaped in memory when furt This novel breaks so many taboos, it is hard to know where to start reflecting on it. It is about the past being reshaped in memory when further knowledge about a person adds a new layer to a relationship.
It is about the coexistence of complete indifference towards the lives of many human beings and compassion for one specific individual. It is surprisingly not much about hatred, despite the topic. It is about overcoming a disability.
It is about facing justice - or not. It is painful to read. And yet hope hides in a corner. If you can't read it yourself, find someone who is willing to read it to you. Or record it on tape. Literacy is a massive achievement and immensely important for human communication. Read it! Jan 28, Hirdesh rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction , favorites. Great book. Wonderful piece and remotely expressed Words flowing like water in oceans. I'd Miss someone with that book.
As the Young Lady entangled with teen. Which flows the flawless love between them even when she got life imprisonment, She was turned to old. And Teen was turned to Man. Time had changed, but their love sustained as he gave her recordings of stories. Lovely Book. Also, Watch movie based on this novel, My one of favourite actress, the drama Queen Kate Winslet's performance was surreal Great book.
Also, Watch movie based on this novel, My one of favourite actress, the drama Queen Kate Winslet's performance was surreal. View all 18 comments. Sep 14, Annemarie rated it liked it Shelves: read-in-german. The biggest problem I had with this book was the fact that it made me feel I didn't feel connected to the characters or to any part of the plot.
This is quite a bummer, as it deals with a pretty heavy topic. I feel like the author intended to write the story this way though, because the writing style in general has a certain type of "coldness" to it, and the true feelings of a character are never really explored. Some people might not be bothered by this, but I personally simply prefe The biggest problem I had with this book was the fact that it made me feel Some people might not be bothered by this, but I personally simply prefer feeling close and connected to the characters of a story.
This doesn't make the entire book bad though. It certainly was interesting, and Bernhard Schlink is skillful with how he uses words. I also appreciated how he always got straight to the point, instead of writing unnecessary details to prolong the plot points we all already know are coming.
I also couldn't help but feel disgusted at the things taking place in the first part of the book, and I wish the problematic aspects were explored further, instead of just brushing upon the issue later on.
Overall, this was a good book to read inbetween, but nothing life changing or special. The book is clearly structured. Also the choice of words is at a normal level and therefore also suitable for beginners in classical, great literature.
View 2 comments. Jun 09, Matt rated it did not like it Shelves: historical-fiction , world-war-ii. It's too simple to say I read any single book because I want to read it.
There are dozens of reasons I'll pick up a particular title: I like the author; I like the subject matter; the book is an award winner; the book comes with many trusted recommendations; I was supposed to read the book in high school and I feel guilty because I played Goldeneye on my N64 instead. I'd take it to the cafeteria every day and let p It's too simple to say I read any single book because I want to read it.
I'd take it to the cafeteria every day and let people see me with it. I was trying to project a certain image; unfortunately, the image I projected was a creepy loner way too interested in Russian melodrama.
I read The Reader because it had Nazis. And because it prominently featured a deviant sexual affair. Sold and sold.
I dared think that Bernhard Schlink's novel might be that rarest of things, these days: truly transgressive. I mean, sex and Nazis and a literary pedigree to boot. Where do I sign up? This slim novel tells the story of an affair between 15 year-old Michael and the far-older Hanna, with whom he has an affair in West Germany in Hanna, a tram conductor, comes to Michael's aid when Michael falls ills.
Later, Michael's mother forces Michael to go thank Hanna; after a laughably stupid seduction the literary equivalent of that old porn standby, the copy repairman , the two are having an affair. I guess this is shocking? Taboo busting?
I don't know. I can't really muster much moral outrage at statutory rape when it is set against the recent background of the Holocaust. Moreover, the scenes between the two "lovers" how I despise that phrase!
In reality, Schlink is a judge, and I suppose the detached, just-the-facts-ness of The Reader could be compared to a legal brief. The affair goes on for awhile. It doesn't generate much heat, since both the main characters are constructed out of cardboard, with macaroni faces and yarn for hair. The title is also explained - partially - because Michael must read aloud to Hanna before they Biblically unite.
That sound you hear is my eyes rolling. Eventually, Hanna disappears. Turns out she was a concentration camp guard: think Mary Kay Letourneau crossed with Heinrich Himmler. It's hard to screw up a novel about a Nazi pedophile, but it happens here. There is always going to be tension when a fictional work of art using that term loosely is set against the backdrop of a recent tragedy.
Until the last person who survived said tragedy is dead, any author daring to touch the subject is going to get dinged a little.
We can all argue about the morality of such fictionalizations, but the point is moot. It's going to happen. Schlink obviously knew the dangers going in, and tried to avoid them. In doing so, he wrote a book that is simply flat. There are two directions to take a story like this. First, there is over-the-top, Inglorious Basterds -style pulp. Just accept that your book is basically fan-fiction from the SS Experiment Camp line of movies, and wait for Cinemax to call with an offer.
The second direction is to make a serious, searching novel about an ordinary person who survived the Holocaust, but as a cog in the machinery of death, rather than a survivor.
Explore how that person lives each day wtih the things he or she has done. This kind of book would take a lot of psychological digging, and there aren't a lot of authors up to this task. The Reader tries to do a little of both, and ends up a big, dull, intellecutally-insulting dud. As already noted, the love affair generates slightly less heat than the pairing of Liza Minnelli and David Gest. The decision to include a statutorily illegal relationship was obviously meant to garner attention, but it fails to shock, titilate, or even vaguely incite any interest.
The transition to the courtroom, and beyond, is even worse. Here, the author makes a half-hearted attempt to avoid moral relativism, and then falls right into that trap. In an epic bit of reductionism, Schlink manages to equate the tragedy of the Holocaust with - spoiler alert, I guess - adult illiteracy.
If only that was a joke. Schlink's idea of depth is to fill a couple of pages with facile hypothetical questions that he helpfully leaves unanswered. All the better; I doubt I would care about what answers he discovered. I suppose I got what I deserved. It's like when you click on a hyperlink for naked celebrity photos and get a computer virus instead.
Or so I've been told I picked up this book thinking it might be trashy, and it turned out it was, but just not the kind of trash I enjoy. View 1 comment. I mean She did not know what she should or could have done differently, and therefore wanted to hear from the judge, who seemed to know everything, what he would have done. Should Michael, being the only other person to know Hanna's secret, have exposed this secret in order to help her during the trial?
Should Michael have been more understand " " I Should Michael have been more understanding toward Hanna, after the trial? Should the average German citizen feel shame for not doing more to avert the Holocaust? As 'that guard', what should Hanna have done?
Like we mentioned earlier, most statistics consider a page to contain roughly words. Taking into account that an average reader can go through around words in a minute, the short answer is obviously that on average a page takes roughly 1 minute to be read. Other factors come into play here as well.
The type of book from which the page is taken can have a major impact on the reading speed. On top of this, the reader plays a very important role in the speed and the time spent on reading a page can vary from less than a minute to more than two just depending on the level of training the person has. Yes, reading speed is a thing that can be trained.
You can even test your reading speed online. Believe it or not, the year the book was written in plays a role as well. You will find that it is a lot easier and it takes you a lot less time to read a page from a contemporary book than it would from a book written in the s. That is because of the difference in language and tone from the text.
Let me answer that question with another question: what book? Again, there are so many factors that come into play here, statistics are rendered meaningless. Books have different numbers of pages, different numbers of words on each page, authors use different types of language, different tones. On top of this, like we mentioned earlier, each reader has their own speed. There are just too many variables in this equation, so an exact answer is almost impossible to provide.
What we can do instead is set ourselves certain thresholds. According to statistics, it will take her a little over 8 hours to finish leafing through the book.
That is of course just an estimation. With a number of pages and an estimated word count of ,, it will take an average words per minute reader 9 hours and 22 minutes to finish the book. This book has pages, with an estimated word count of 96, It will take an average reader 6 hours and 17 minutes to go through the entire book.
With pages and an estimated word count of 83, the average reader will manage to leaf through it in 5 hours and 56 minutes. As you can see, just by taking three classic books and comparing the results we can conclude that the reading time varies considerably from one title to another.
Like we mentioned earlier, the year a book was written in can greatly affect the speed it can be read at. Differences in language, tone, expressions can make an old book challenging to read when compared to one written in recent years.
How long does it take to read pages from an old book?
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