Trevor called his memoir Born a Crime because that’s what Trevor was. He was born to a black mother and to a white father in South Africa during apartheid. That was a crime. Parents could go to jail for this, Trevor could be taken from his family and placed in an orphanage. His mom had to photobomb family photos taken outside because she had to pretend she was not his mom but a servant. They had to sneak out to see his father. Trevor had to spend most of his childhood behind closed doors. They lived in a city designed in such a way that it could be easily bombed in case of an uprising. How Trevor Noah managed to turn it all into a heartwarming, moving and funny story is a mystery to me, but he definitely achieved this.The book has taught me so much. I mean not only historical and cultural facts that are not known to an average person from Europe thanks to education system that has other priorities, but also for putting everything into perspective. The book shows you that you believed in something without even knowing it and that you took many things for granted.Born a Crime has many interesting thoughts. I especially loved the one on racism and how it is easily destroyed by language. A person can only hate something that sounds different. As soon as you start speaking their language they understand that you are one of them. I love Trevor’s book because it uncovers many of such gems, and does this without any pompousness or drama.At some point I was actually ready to cut one star of the book for Trevor’s dismissive attitude to cats. It’s my judgement after all and it can, indeed, be influenced by such details. The star was soon restored. Even my overprotection of cats couldn’t outweigh the awesomeness of the book. By the end of the book I felt awkward for having even considered giving the book anything less than five stars.Such books teach you more than any education programs or historical works. They are as truthful representation of a reality as there can be. Yes, they are personal and subjective but they are not brushed over by a system and so they are always more genuine.I’m very thankful to the book and I would suggest anybody to read it. I would also advise getting the audio version first if you are fine with audiobooks. Trevor’s performance is priceless.

You always know when you are reading a good book. It doesn’t feel like a book. You see no traces of backstage manipulations, no tricks, no author. The story is alive on its own.

The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles feels so real I had to double-check it’s not a memoir. Even when I already knew the characters were fictional (although they were partially based on real people) I was still googling for them. I wanted to see what they looked like even though I knew they never existed. That’s the closest I could find.

According to the interview with the author, these two singers, Carmen Miranda and Chavela Vargas, were the inspiration for some of the characters’ traits and stories.

In some sources The Air You Breathe is called a saga. It does indeed cover a lifelong story but it doesn’t feel unbearably huge. Reading it is like listening to a person who is speaking about her love for a person and for music.

The music is so palpable it gives the book a new dimension. I now know samba without having ever listened to it before.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76R6O1va9iM?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

At first, I was thinking the book would make a great movie. There are so many amazing visuals, really good songs. But the more the story developed the more I understood a movie might turn this story into another postproduction amputee. There are too many depths and precious moments for a movie to handle. I just hope that if the story is ever picked up for an adaptation it will be preserved as it is.

Such books are not born overnight. I don’t even mean all the research that went into The Air Your Breathe to show the readers Brazil in the 30s and Hollywood in the 40s. I mean the maturity of the book. It feels like classic even though it was published just three days ago. Such quality requires not only skill and talent but time to brew. I contacted Frances de Pontes Peebles, the author, for more information and found out that my perception was right. Frances said it took her 9 years to write the book.

I feel lucky to have found this book and to be living at times when I could get it with one click. I also feel a bit envious of those who haven’t read it yet. They have yet to meet the characters, whom I already miss, and to enjoy a really good book.

Genre: Memoir
Stars from Goodreads: 4.04
Stars from me: 5

A Moveable Feast has a complicated history. There are two editions, each corrected by relatives from Hemingway’s different marriages. Thus, the first edition was published in 1964 by his fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, who was accused by some scholars of taking parts out of the manuscript. Those were the parts about Hemingway’s first wife Hadley Richardson where he spoke about her kindly and apologized to her. The second edition was issued in 2009 by Seán Hemingway, Hemingway’s grandson from his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. Seán was blamed for taking out the parts that spoke unkindly about Hemingway’s second wife, Seán’s grandmother.

The chapters also changed places in the book, some added, some merged. The sad thing is, we cannot know what the book would look like had it been published while Hemingway was still alive. Both editions were published posthumously.

Despite so many manipulations of suspicious motives the book turned out to be the only one carrying Hemingway’s voice so clearly. It’s hard to say if it is the effect of writing in the second person “you” (as in “you would notice”, “you would feel”) or the power of some magic he used but the book really transports you to those times and those places, putting you directly beside Hemingway himself. You go to the same places, you eat in the same cafes, drink a lot of wine together and smell roasted chestnuts in cold Parisian air. You get introduced to the Fitzgeralds. Yes, to both of them, the husband and wife. The wife, apparently, was a very interesting person too. You meet Gertrude Stein. You meet all those famous, striking people before they turned into bland black-and-white photos on the covers of their books. You see them as they were in life, or at least the way Hemingway saw them. This is an unforgettable experience.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know” Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast. And it became his truest book.

Genre: semiautobiographical novel
Stars from Goodreads: 3.94
Stars from me: 5

The last time I felt this scent of Berlin was during school Chemistry classes where the curriculum was going one way, and I was going the other, swallowing up novels of Erich Maria Remarque at the back of the classroom, barely acknowledging the lessons.

It felt strange now, decades later, to suddenly smell that Berlin again, in Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin novel. Isherwood, of course, is very different. He and Remarque have similar Berlin but different characters. Isherwood zooms in on people, while Berlin as they knew it, is disappearing. It’s 1930s and these people don’t know what’s coming. Those who feel it, push it away from their consciousness. Nobody believes in the possibilities of the atrocities that are about to happen. They are carrying on with their lives. It feels eerily relevant and familiar to be reading that.

The storylines are snippets of lives: a Jewish rich family and a gay couple. Your skins crawls because you know what’s coming for them. The book doesn’t get to this, at least not in details. It’s not a book on history. It doesn’t even seem to have any global agenda. The book is about the people Christopher Isherwood knew and Berlin that he had to say goodbye to.

Read Miss Ex-Yugoslavia.

If there was only one phrase I could say about this book, that would be it – read it!

I loved the book so much I was ready to send the copies to everybody I knew. Unfortunately, most people I know either don’t read English, or don’t read at all. So I created this blog to say it to the world – read Miss Ex-Yugoslavia!

Read it, even if you have no idea about Yugoslavia, or any other socialist country, or what it feels like to be a bearer of two different cultures. In fact, read it exactly for this reason. The book will show you something new. And isn’t it the primary treasure of books, to let you experience what you otherwise would have never experienced?

Read it because it’s honest and clear, like anything that is true art. Miss Ex-Yugoslavia will teach you more about history, people and wars than all school books combined.

The book will make you laugh and cry, aloud and alone. And how often does this happen nowadays?

Finally, if you were born in a socialist country, if you know what it is like to acquire a new different culture, if you know what it feels like when different truths contradict each other and are still equally real, this book is definitely for you. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will reconnect with times and spaces that you considered long lost. This book will not just be an exciting read but a journey.

My heartfelt thanks to the author Sofija Stefanovic for this amazing experience!