Pooja鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

62,104

pages read

184

books read

Pooja Peravali

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

Shortest Book

pages

Longest Book

937

pages

Average book length in 2024

337

pages

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Most Shelved

6,913,603

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Least Shelved

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Pooja鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.4

The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

4.73 average

Pooja鈥檚 first review of the year

really liked it

Born in poverty and raised in a squalid orphanage, Phaedra鈥檚 life transforms completely when her identity as a prince鈥檚 illegitimate daughter is revealed, vaunting her into the lap of luxury. But she has a long, tough path to tread still before she will reach her happy ending.

I really, really love the crazy bloody bodice rippers of the 1970s and 80s. They are always wild and adventurous, often with a strong historical grounding, and take you care ...more

笔翱翱闯础鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

it was amazing

An Unlikely Match for the Governess by Lauri Robinson

Under The Influence Vol. 1 by Eliot Rahal

The Hidden History of the Boston Tea Party by Adam Jortner

Dark Before the Rising Sun by Laurie McBain

it was amazing

Strange Ways to Die in History by Ben Gazur

really liked it

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Emma Southon

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

it was amazing

The Yakuza's Bias, Volume 1 by Teki Yatsuda

Brave Bird at Wounded Knee by Rachel Bithell

The Kachina Doll Mystery by Carolyn Keene

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

it was amazing

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen

The Princess Protection Program by Alex London

really liked it

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub

it was amazing

Sisters Under the Rising Sun by Heather Morris

A Liaison with Her Leading Lady by Lotte R. James

The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland

really liked it

A Most Efficient Murder by Anthony Slayton

really liked it

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer

Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

really liked it

The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh

it was amazing

Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Great Scandals of the Victorians by Debbie Blake

Marry Me by Midnight by Felicia Grossman

Mistress of Life and Death by Susan J. Eischeid

Pooja鈥檚 last review of the year

really liked it

As Head Overseer of the woman's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maria Mandl was the highest-ranked female perpetrator of the Holocaust. In this book, author Eischeid examines how she came to reach this position, and more broadly the role of women in the Nazi killing machine.

The architects and perpetrators of the Holocaust that most people are familiar with are male, but female Nazi party members played a major role in running the concentration camps As Head Overseer of the woman's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maria Mandl was the highest-ranked female perpetrator of the Holocaust. In this book, author Eischeid examines how she came to reach this position, and more broadly the role of women in the Nazi killing machine.

The architects and perpetrators of the Holocaust that most people are familiar with are male, but female Nazi party members played a major role in running the concentration camps too. Though the vast majority of them managed to slip back into obscurity by virtue of their sex, the most visible ones聽 like Mandl garnered a perhaps outsized amount of attention for the same reasons.

And Mandl is certainly an interesting case study. This book is the result of literal decades of research and interviews on the part of the author, who spoke to among others friends and neighbors of Mandl, as well as the concentration camp prisoners who suffered under her administration. In painstaking detail she recounts all the ways in which Mandl was complicit, but she presents a nuanced, often conflicting portrait of her without flinching too.

How can one reconcile the side of the personality that led a child she'd made a pet by hand to the gas chamber with the side that loved music and granted special privileges to the members of all-prisoner women's orchestra; who brutally beat prisoners for the slightest infractions but also spared the lives of at least a couple of them? Consider her staid background and her upbringing in a family which did not approve of her fervent Nazism, and things become even more convoluted.

I wish we got a better understanding of why Mandl flipped so suddenly and earnestly into brutal behavior as soon as she began working at Ravensbr眉ck, but I suppose some things can't be explained by anyone but her. I did find the pacing of the book a little choppy with many short chapters though, and wished the writing had flowed a bit better.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review. ...more

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