I recently joined a book club and think I am going to enjoy it because I will be reading books I would not have ordinarily chosen. The book I just finished is The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz. The story takes place in 1941 and starts out in Moscow where the Polish author has been arrested and is being coerced into signing a confession. As I started the first chapter I realized that he was going to be tortured and I cannot read (or watch) about that subject. I knew I could not read the book and put it down for two weeks. As I thought about it and after reading the reviews on the back cover I decided to try again but to skip the first chapter because after he signs the confession he and hundreds of other prisoners are marched thousands of miles across Russia into Siberia to a labor camp. That I can read.
"The Long Walk is a book that I absolutely could not put down and one that I will never forget." --Stephen Ambrose. I could not put it down either.
To paraphrase a review: 'In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp and marched thousands of miles by foot--out of Siberia and through Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, Tibet and over the Himalayas to British India.'
Check it out!
Added to my list of to-read books! (Along with Three Cups of Tea.) :)
ReplyDeleteI love survival stories. And I am becoming a big fan of non fiction.
ReplyDeleteA good friend of mine recently finished "The Long Walk." She had a similar review--hard to get started because of the subject matter, and then unforgettable and hard to put down.
ReplyDeleteI, too, will read it after I finish Stones Into Schools
ReplyDeleteArgh! It's not available for Kindle. That annoys me greatly. Do you have the book to lend me, or did you check it out from the library?
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine just finished Miracle in the Andes: 72 days on the mountain and my long trek home about the rugby team that was on a plane when it crashed in the Andes. (There is cannibalism, though, so I'm not sure how appealing that particular story might be.)
ReplyDeleteI checked it out from the library. Do you want me be renew it and bring it with me?
ReplyDeleteI think I would like to read Miracle in the Andes-Hopefully the cannibalism is not detailed.
No, don't renew it. I'll either check it out here or buy the book. I don't want to be obligated to someone else's library card. :)
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