Theme Parks You Won't Be Seeing Any Time Soon or Home Sweet Own Challenge Book 4

For the past, I used a book to visit a place that is no more but should never be forgotten. Stasiland by Anna Funder is part memoir and part history. It details Funder’s search for stories of life in the German Democratic Republic as lived by every day people. As an American I’ve never known a life without near total freedom. I was at the Newseum and I wanted to read about what life in East Germany was like. I’d seen films but I wanted to read real stories.

Funder tells us the tale of the man who designed the wall, the woman who was separated from her child by it, and the woman who almost made it across. She talks to former Stasi officers, sees where they used to work, and sees where they tortured prisoners. Despite German unification, many people never lost their mentality and still believe East Germany will rise again.

Toward the end of the book we see the trend of false nostalgia for life in the GDR. Mostly it’s youths who “long for something to yearn for” and older people who seem to have forgotten that near homelessness came at the price total surveillance. Some people who were wronged by the state are still being intimidated and followed when they try to preserve what history did to them.

I wanted a little more of the culture shock when the wall came down but that wasn’t the point of the book I suppose. I think this book is very important to our history and remembrance of that world. It’s a past we can never go back to in a place that no longer exists but it’s a past we may yet see again.

1) Fiction 

2) Nonfiction 

3) Sci-Fi 

4) Fantasy 

5) Mystery 

6) Horror 

7) Memoir/Biography 

8) Chick Lit 

9) Feminist 

10) Teen 

11) Holiday 

12) Essays – What Was I Thinking? ed. by Barbara Davilman & Liz Dubelman

13) Short Stories 

14) Library 

15) Animal 

16) Book about Books 

17) New 

18) Old 

19) Pop Science 

20) Near 

21) Far 

22) Graphic Novel – Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? by Thomas F. Zahler

23) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

24) Wild Card 

25) Otherworldly Creature 

26) Free 

27) Noteworthy 

28) Bestseller 

29) Themed Anthology 

30) Steampunk 

31) Movie-Book 

32) Media  

33) Travel 

34) Food 

35) Classic 

36) Humor 

37) Poetry 

38) Past – Stasiland by Anna Funder

39) Future 

40) Dystopia/Post-Apocalyptic 

41) Zombie 

42) Sports 

Current Music: Memories by Within Temptation