The Best Addiction

I am happiest when I am reading compulsively. And after having read a lot not by choice, for classes taken, classes taught, even for book group, I like to go where my tastes take me. I am deep into WWII, the years before the war, the years Europe was occupied, as well as these years on the home front. My inspiration for all this: my mother who came to Washington, DC in the summer of 1944 to work for the war effort. In June she took a streetcar down to the National Gallery. A young tanned marine stood and let her have his seat, which lead to romance, marriage and me. When I read about their time, I draw them closer and get to spend time with them once more.

Historical novelist, Alan Furst, is a favorite of mine. One of my reading addicted friends recently complained that Furst didn’t write fast enough. Recently I finished his early novel Night Soldiers, which manages to make a hero out of a NKVD soldier. Mission to Paris, his latest, was such a great read I read and then listened to the audio. Another favorite is David Gilham’s City of Women, set in Berlin in 1943.

At our July meeting of the mystery book group, Eileen McGervey, owner of One More Page Books, brought ARCs, advanced reader’s copies of new books coming out, to give to us mystery-hungry readers. Someone handed me a book by David Downing called One More Flag about a spy in WWI.

This book led me to Downing’s John Russell novels set mostly in Berlin in the days prior to the Nazi invasion of Poland and outbreak of war. Since Russell is a journalist, he travels to most of central and Eastern Europe whenever a story breaks out. And like THE WALL STREET JOURNAL wrote, “Downing is a master of bringing the past to life.”

These novels are named for Berlin’s subway or u bahn stations. In the first, Zoo Station, Russell chances upon a Kinder-transport, when Jewish parents put their children on trains bound for England and safety. The pain of parent and child separation is palpable, but so is the danger they are leaving. A Red Cross nurse in charge of the children learns that no one is safe when she goes up against an SS officer on the train platform.

So I am hooked. I love that all these u bahn named novels stretch out before me, beckoning me to read. A few summer ago, we spent several weeks in Berlin, a fun gorgeous city I can revisit through John Russell’s eyes. What pleasure to discover a talented author and begin to read their work.

But I must break the trance to read our book group selection, Maurizio De Giovani’s I Will Have Vengeance. I am over 30 pages in and find the magical realism enchanting.