The Books I Didn't Finish

This autobiography offers a rare inside look at the society surrounding a sultan's palace. Its author, a real-life princess in exile, recalls her vanished world of harems, slave trading, and court intrigues. The Midwest Book Review praised this book as an engrossing memoir, offering a vivid portrait of 19th-century Arab and African life.

This one was quite interesting although had a bajillion spelling and grammar or printing mistakes. Interesting, but not captivating. I'm fascinated about how life was back then, but can't really imagine it at all ... seems quite surreal. And not only is there a different era to imagine, but an entirely different religion. I was about half way thru it when I left for Canada and just haven't got back into it ... no excuses, really. Perhaps another day.

From 1943 to 1951, 350 or so men and women from thirteen Allied nations served as the men and women of the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives section (MFAA) of the Allied armed forces, the eyes, ears and hands of the first and most ambitious effort in history to preserve the world's cultural heritage in times of war. They were known simply as Monuments Men. But during the thick of the fighting in Europe, from D-Day to V-E Day, when Germany surrendered, there were only 65 Monuments Men in the forward operating area. Sixty-five men to cover thousands of square miles, save hundreds of damaged buildings and find millions of cultural items before the Nazis could destroy them forever. Monuments Men is the story of eight of these men in the forward operating theatre: America's top art conservator; an up-and-coming young museum curator; a sculptor; a straight-arrow architect; a gay New York cultural impresario; and, an infantry private with no prior knowledge of or appreciation for art, but first-hand experience as a victim of the Nazi regime. They built their own treasure maps from scraps and hints: the diary of a Louvre curator who secretly tracked Nazi plunder through the Paris rail yards; records recovered from bombed out cathedrals and museums; overheard conversations; and, a tip from a dentist while getting a root canal. They started off moving in different directions, but ended up heading for the same place at the same time: the Alps near the German-Austrian border in the last two weeks of the war, where the great treasure caches of the Nazis were stored: the artwork of Paris, stolen mostly from Jewish collectors and dealers; masterworks from the museums of Naples and Florence; and, the greatest prize of all, Hitler's personal hoard of masterpieces, looted from the most important art collections and museums in Europe and hidden deep within a working salt mine - a mine the Nazis had every intention of destroying before it fell into Allied hands. How does the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History end? As is often the case, history is often more extraordinary than fiction.

Now this one I was all set to really enjoy ... I guess I was naive to expect some swashbuckling Nazi story ala Inglourious Basterds. I was sorely disappointed. Although I still think this is an interesting story, man oh man, is this a tedious read. Seriously, draining.

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