When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II
By: Molly Guptill Manning / Narrated By: Bernadette Dunne
Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
A trifle repetitious, but seriously! Huzzah!
So, like, when is a book about books not great fun?
Wellll, shall I do the un-nifty parts first?
Okay, I shall: Betty Smith and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (To be reviewed SOMEday as it’s a family fave) get heavy kudos, and at first it’s absolutely beautiful. Smith receives a letter from a soldier who’s seen far too much in his very young life. After so much brutality, he’s numb and is sure he’ll never feel again, too much pain out there, too much pain within. But then he happens upon a copy of Smith’s book, and that story of Francie Nolan? Suddenly he finds himself weeping, feeling so much, in touch with a world he’d thought he’d never be a part of again.
Drop dead gorgeous story.
-But- then as the book goes along, we’re treated to tale after tale after tale of just how many letters from young military Smith gets, how much each loved it, and, uhm… Blah blah Don’t understand it, but it changed m’ life blah. Betty Smith all over the place!
Don’t get me wrong, I liked When Books Went to War quite a bit. EsPECially as the catalyst for the books to service members project was undertaken in response to the book bannings/book burnings going on in the up and coming new Reich, Nazi Germany. Librarians were incensed, and authors were terrified as they saw what was happening to fellow writers, to the creative works of those fellow writers. Libraries in newly occupied territories were purged, leaving shelves empty, leaving books charred to ashes. This audiobook I listened to as I’d JUST seen a picture of a cheering crowd in Tennessee around a bonfire of burning books juxtaposed next to an old photo of a crowd doing the same in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Jeez Louise, is this the part where I say: Don’t we ever learn? Is History doomed to repeat itself?
But I feel a soapbox sloooowly beginning to take shape beneath m’ feet, so I’ll get posthaste! back to the audiobook.
As all these things were going on, as men began their stints in faraway lands facing boredom punctuated by hell, librarians began a book drive designed to collect books from the public to ship over to troops. This didn’t go as well as hoped, and books about knitting, whilst surely much-loved, were NOT going to be appreciated by battle-hardened men.
Soon the government and publishing companies were in much-needed cahoots and were designing books that were lightweight and easy to carry along with all the men had to carry besides. A wide variety of genres were printed, and men who’d never been much into reading were suddenly finding themselves enchanted. Whether it was down time where loved ones could’ve been missed but weren’t since their minds and hearts were now engaged by reading, or it was a foxhole where shrapnel was whizzing overhead and the men couldn’t move, their new worlds were now forever altered by this opportunity to escape the monotony, escape the hells that surrounded them.
There were missteps along the way as such massive efforts led, occasionally, to stuff like pages 32-58 being printed twice. But the one thing sure to inspire hate letters were those times when stuff like pages 32-58 were entirely missing. NO FAIR, and this happened right when things were Getting Good!
The more interesting parts (Seeing as author Molly Guptill Manning reeeeally and very obviously shows she’s proud of such research by relating such episodes over and over and over and changes things up only by switching letters of complaint… like, we got it the first two times…!) are when America is challenged doing the very same things we decried Nazi Germany for doing. Namely, the country, some locations more so than others, leaned heavily towards censorship and deciding what the men fighting could read. ANYthing that smacked of politics that might sway the men towards voting President Roosevelt back into Office for a fourth term. Legal cases were brought and lost, until advocates for heavy censorship started being shamed into recanting… with avenues of escape lest they lose all face. And censorship demanded because titles were deemed Obscene? Oh, grooooan…!
Soooo familiar, but lemme step away from that looming soapbox again.
Onto Bernadette Dunne. When is she ever anything less than stellar? This audiobook delves heavily upon letters, the written intentions of the men, and Dunne has such a unique voice, just the right register, that battle-hardened men, men tired of living, men exasperated by missing pages, ALL are delivered in a voice that does NOT annoy but is respectful. Just the right emotion is expressed at the appropriate times. And when it comes to the legal wrangling, the political posturing, Dunne has that done properly as well.
The writing is pretty good, just that bit o’ repetitiousness. But it was impeccably researched, and I did sooo love the concept. Men loving these Armed Services Editions, enough that they read aloud to each other rather than share them so that the books might not fall apart too soon; men tucking them into kitbags as they hiked to the next scene of carnage; or books on operating floors near the front, two-thirds of the pages rumpled and blood-stained. How can you NOT find that engaging?
I did, after all, get my start in life with books as both of my parents were SUCH avid readers, and I am fond of Classics (Well, nowadays they’re considered Classics, at the time some of those books were quite Contemporary), so it was a blast listening to the titles that made it to war, that saw men through Life in the Armed Forces (By the way, women serving only got “Women’s” journals as it was assumed they were close to libraries and could check out what they liked… uhm, booooo!). And while I don’t see m’self reading, actually reading, like, a print book any time soon?
Dude, Listening to a book about books about books about books about books, just sooo many books?
Mighty good time indeed!
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