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azure_oblivion's review against another edition
5.0
It doesn't feel right to rate this book, because at the end of the day, it's not like other books that were drafted and edited over and over again until they were polished enough to be published. This is a young girl's diary, an account of an extraordinary and horrific thing that happened to a not so extraordinary person. In other words, a person who had hopes and dreams and quirks and family troubles just like any other person. Yet I have rated it. Why? Because it really is something every person should read. It is a gift, and how lucky we are that the words of Anne Frank have lived on just as she hoped they would.
The thing that struck me first about Anne Frank's writing (and yes, it is good, and not at all dull to read in case you were wondering) is that she took me back. I remembered being her age, remembered all the worries that might seem so trivial now. I'm glad I saved Anne's story for my twenties, if only for the chance to relive the beautiful and complicated time that is a girl's early teens. The diary is a perfect example of self-discovery, a true and intimate account of Anne's thoughts and feelings that every female, if not every male, can relate to. I can imagine I'm not alone in seeing parts of my teenage self echoed in Anne's words, which made reading the diary all the more poignant, almost like finding a friend to whom I could reveal my innermost self, because the honesty with which she wrote was untainted by the fear of someone reading and judging it. But most importantly of all, this diary is a reminder that the victims of the war and the Holocaust were not just a part of history, they were people just like us with personalities and plans and opinions, with lives before the war and hopes of continuing with those lives after the war. And remembering they were just like us is what brings it all, very painfully, home.
Long live Anne Frank's memory. The survival of this diary has made her immortal.
The thing that struck me first about Anne Frank's writing (and yes, it is good, and not at all dull to read in case you were wondering) is that she took me back. I remembered being her age, remembered all the worries that might seem so trivial now. I'm glad I saved Anne's story for my twenties, if only for the chance to relive the beautiful and complicated time that is a girl's early teens. The diary is a perfect example of self-discovery, a true and intimate account of Anne's thoughts and feelings that every female, if not every male, can relate to. I can imagine I'm not alone in seeing parts of my teenage self echoed in Anne's words, which made reading the diary all the more poignant, almost like finding a friend to whom I could reveal my innermost self, because the honesty with which she wrote was untainted by the fear of someone reading and judging it. But most importantly of all, this diary is a reminder that the victims of the war and the Holocaust were not just a part of history, they were people just like us with personalities and plans and opinions, with lives before the war and hopes of continuing with those lives after the war. And remembering they were just like us is what brings it all, very painfully, home.
Long live Anne Frank's memory. The survival of this diary has made her immortal.
shindlershylock999's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
edgarandrewpoe's review against another edition
4.0
Good but Depressing when you know what happened to her
ashley_eliza's review against another edition
4.0
As I’m sure you’ll see in many of the reviews by my fellow readers, this book affected me in a way I wasn’t ready for. I know about Anne Frank and the annex and how she died. I learned about her in school and read the play that takes excerpts from her diary. I still was unprepared for the full experience of reading everything from her first-person perspective.
She was a teenager, and so very human. She got into fights with her family, fell in love, and dreamed of better days when she could be free. I think it’s easy to sensationalize people who died in tragic ways, but she was a person just like anybody else. A person whose life was taken too soon.
I wish I could have a conversation with her. I appreciated her brutal honesty in the diary- she never hid any of her feelings from herself.
She was a teenager, and so very human. She got into fights with her family, fell in love, and dreamed of better days when she could be free. I think it’s easy to sensationalize people who died in tragic ways, but she was a person just like anybody else. A person whose life was taken too soon.
I wish I could have a conversation with her. I appreciated her brutal honesty in the diary- she never hid any of her feelings from herself.
bethaniekay's review against another edition
4.0
I’m not sure why I’ve never read this book before – I guess it wasn’t required reading when I was in school. I decided to pick it up and read it now because I’m going to be visiting Amsterdam next week, and the Anne Frank House is one of the top sights to visit there. I figured it was only appropriate for me to have actually read the book before I visit.
Through Anne’s diary, we get an understanding of what life was like for the Jewish people living in Amsterdam during WWII, and more poignantly, what it was like to be in hiding with 7 other people in a “Secret Annex” designed for this purpose, to avoid persecution and death at the hands of the Nazis. For being a teenager, Anne is incredibly well-spoken, has a great sense of self (she admits to being very self-aware) and is able to verbalize her thoughts, feelings and emotions better than most teenagers would be able to. It’s quite incredible that she was able to maintain such a positive outlook, and to remain creative (and using her creative outlet of writing) during her 25+ months in hiding. I enjoyed the variety of topics that she discussed; everything from the daily dynamics of the household (who slept where, what was eaten, hygiene and personal habits, interactions with each other, conversations), to the weather, her musings about puberty, the war, politics, humanity, the multiple languages she was learning to read and write, and all of her other various literary interests (reading about history, genealogy, mythology and more). No doubt all of these literary habits lent to her writing skills and advanced knowledge of the world, for her age.
Of course the story ends on a tragic note (we knew it would), and yet how profound and ironic that Anne’s diary did get published (as she said multiple times that she hoped it would) and that people actually do care about what she wrote and how she lived, and that her ‘legend’ lives on to this day through her writing, and through the Secret Annex itself and those who visit it.
The one thing that ‘bothered’ me about this story – if you can call it that – is that it’s hard to know how much of the writing is actually Anne’s, and how much is the work of the translator. I’m assuming that the diary was originally written in either Dutch or German (or both), and has been translated into the English version I read. It seemed that some of the words, sentences and phrases where just not what would have been used by a 13-15 year old girl in the 1940’s in Europe. For example, the word “umpteenth” was used, or there was a joking remark about a toilet being called “the can”. Also, there was a poem in the diary that rhymed in English – which makes me wonder what the original words were, as they likely wouldn’t have rhymed in the original language. All of this didn’t detract too much from the story, but it did, in my mind, seem to reduce some of the credibility of the writing and make me wonder how Anne really spoke and really wrote.
Regardless - it’s a terrible tragedy that Anne survived so much, then succumbed in the end to a disease, and only a month before the concentration camp she was imprisoned in was liberated. It’s fortunate (?) that her father survived, and was able to share Anne’s diary with the world.
Through Anne’s diary, we get an understanding of what life was like for the Jewish people living in Amsterdam during WWII, and more poignantly, what it was like to be in hiding with 7 other people in a “Secret Annex” designed for this purpose, to avoid persecution and death at the hands of the Nazis. For being a teenager, Anne is incredibly well-spoken, has a great sense of self (she admits to being very self-aware) and is able to verbalize her thoughts, feelings and emotions better than most teenagers would be able to. It’s quite incredible that she was able to maintain such a positive outlook, and to remain creative (and using her creative outlet of writing) during her 25+ months in hiding. I enjoyed the variety of topics that she discussed; everything from the daily dynamics of the household (who slept where, what was eaten, hygiene and personal habits, interactions with each other, conversations), to the weather, her musings about puberty, the war, politics, humanity, the multiple languages she was learning to read and write, and all of her other various literary interests (reading about history, genealogy, mythology and more). No doubt all of these literary habits lent to her writing skills and advanced knowledge of the world, for her age.
Of course the story ends on a tragic note (we knew it would), and yet how profound and ironic that Anne’s diary did get published (as she said multiple times that she hoped it would) and that people actually do care about what she wrote and how she lived, and that her ‘legend’ lives on to this day through her writing, and through the Secret Annex itself and those who visit it.
The one thing that ‘bothered’ me about this story – if you can call it that – is that it’s hard to know how much of the writing is actually Anne’s, and how much is the work of the translator. I’m assuming that the diary was originally written in either Dutch or German (or both), and has been translated into the English version I read. It seemed that some of the words, sentences and phrases where just not what would have been used by a 13-15 year old girl in the 1940’s in Europe. For example, the word “umpteenth” was used, or there was a joking remark about a toilet being called “the can”. Also, there was a poem in the diary that rhymed in English – which makes me wonder what the original words were, as they likely wouldn’t have rhymed in the original language. All of this didn’t detract too much from the story, but it did, in my mind, seem to reduce some of the credibility of the writing and make me wonder how Anne really spoke and really wrote.
Regardless - it’s a terrible tragedy that Anne survived so much, then succumbed in the end to a disease, and only a month before the concentration camp she was imprisoned in was liberated. It’s fortunate (?) that her father survived, and was able to share Anne’s diary with the world.
roxysho's review against another edition
2.0
Al comienzo me gusto bastante, lo leí en cuarentena entonces leía como Anna y su familia pasaban por cosas similares pero peores que las mías y aun así tenían una sonrisa. Pero a medida que el libro avanzo se estanco y Anna no hablaba de otra cosa que de riñas o de Peter, ohhh Peter me ama o Peter no me ama. Se volvió muy repetitivo en ese sentido.
Quede muy desilusionada por que esta chiquilla no hace otra cosa que pensar en Peter, teniendo problemas mas importantes como el holocausto a la vuelta de la esquina. Por eso un libro tan corto me llevo tanto leerlo.
Quede muy desilusionada por que esta chiquilla no hace otra cosa que pensar en Peter, teniendo problemas mas importantes como el holocausto a la vuelta de la esquina. Por eso un libro tan corto me llevo tanto leerlo.
nermrlib's review against another edition
5.0
I read this in middle school, and it haunts me to this day.