I heard that there was a new movie out wherein Kate Winslet is naked a lot. There are very few things in the world that are nicer than a naked Kate Winslet, and on that count, I would have wanted to see the movie even if it had no story at all.

Of course, I always want to be the smug arsehole who reads the book first, and then prattles on about how the book was better than the movie.

Well, there’s no naked Kate Winslet in the book, but it’s a very good book nonetheless. It’s about the Holocaust, but it doesn’t club you over the head with gore and misery. It kind of boils the whole Nazi business down to one character (Winslet’s) and lets you think about whether she is a bad person or not, and about how you might have behaved were you in her shoes.

Also interesting to me were the ideas about what the German equivalent of the “baby boom” generation thinks of its parents. Tom Brokaw writes about how the WWII-era Americans are the “Greatest Generation,” but I imagine it’s a bit more complicated in Germany.

Anyhow it’s a good book, it’s not too long, and the short chapters kind of pull you though it pretty quickly. It’s got a lot of sex in it, and even some bicycle touring!

I give it 4 Jihadis out of 5