Double Trouble.

Hello world! I woke up this morning with a new perspective on my life, probably influenced from last night's binge of herbal teas and late morning novels. As we all know, I'm a bibliophile who lives to flip through the pages of anything paperbound. I seem to have this in common with my grandmother and mother, who both adore literature to the ends of the Earth. And so, I went raiding, raiding the bookshelves.

I found a copy of Ann Frank's diary and a book called Us Kids From The Station Zoo by Christiane F in Serbian, and read them both. It was slightly strange not reading in English as usual, but the books were amazing none the less. While the first is known worldwide and read by everyone, the second is quite non marketed, and that makes me sad. The two girls are both around the same age, though Christiane's struggles are through a longer time period as well as her less fatal outcome, and they both have the same painfully honest and moody temperamental point of view.

In fact, the books themselves have so many similarities between themselves, and are written in such a way that I can agree with the feelings shown and sympathize with the girls, even though I am nowhere near the events happening and will thankfully never see them. Ann Frank's diary was a shocking look into the world of the reign of Hitler, even if she was in Holland. Her Jewish title gets her into a complicated mess, and a life that no one her age should ever deserve.

I was so glad that the hypocrisy of that war was over, and I lived enough of it in Ann's pages of grief, turmoil, and small joys in the cruel captive state she was in. I recommend it to anyone ages 7 to 107, who hasn't read it. Now, Christiane was in a different sort of battle. She was a young girl in Berlin around the time of 1978 who became a drug addict, and fell into the clutches of heroin. Christiane was dragged into it by her social groups, and stayed in it because of her want to be equal with a boy she adored.

Love sucks sometimes, huh Christiane? The book was a emotional rollercoaster through her self discovery and the disgusting truth behind drugs, what people do to get them, and what withdrawal from not just drugs, but everything you have ever known feels like. The two tales had the same underlying themes and made me wonder why some of us were so fortunate and abused our privileges while others had no choice but to suffer and to go through worse times than we will ever know.