No Place to Lay One’s Head by Françoise Frenkel (1945), trans. Stephanie Smee

I came across Bookish Beck's review of No Place to Lay One's Head last month and knew I just had to read it. It is the memoir of Françoise Frenkel, a Jewish woman from Poland who opened the first French-language bookshop in Berlin, in 1921. She had studied in France, and when on a visit… Continue reading No Place to Lay One’s Head by Françoise Frenkel (1945), trans. Stephanie Smee

Looking back on the books of 2016

This is another overdue blog post, but one that I've really been looking forward to writing. I read 31 books in 2016, of varying quality, but overall it was a good reading year. I tried to branch out, accepting a total of eight review copies from publishers - which is a lot for me these… Continue reading Looking back on the books of 2016

Tales of Survival: A Woman in Berlin and Gone to Ground

I decided to write about both these books in one post for several reasons. They share obvious themes for one, and they complement each other in that one is written by a free German woman, an 'ordinary citizen', and the other is written by a Jewish German woman who spent the war in hiding. They… Continue reading Tales of Survival: A Woman in Berlin and Gone to Ground

Upcoming reads and reviews

I'm focusing purely on reading at the moment, and I know it'll be a week or so until my next review - so in the meantime I thought I'd share a 'preview' of what's coming up, both in my reading and here on the blog. I am about to finish reading the third book in… Continue reading Upcoming reads and reviews