I've been trying to do a lot of reading while I have the time to knock some of the books on my to read list off and check them onto my "read" list. (By the way, it's really hard to distinguish read from read: see, you didn't know which one was past and which one was present, or if they were different at all!) One of those books on my list was The Diary of Anne Frank,which has also happened to be sitting on my to read bookcase for at least a year. (I know I'm a little lame and or crazy to have a bookshelf for "to read" books, but I figure if I already own them it will be easier to get to them, and so I keep books I would remotely be interested in reading in the future.) So the day after I got home, I started reading Anne Frank, and I just finished yesterday. Super lame that it took me that long, but it also made me wonder what it was that wasn't appealing to me so I couldn't put it down.

First I thought perhaps it was the style within which it was written. It is definitely written as a personal diary and with the thoughts and point of view of one person; there are rantings and ponderies but it is all so one sided, there was more than one time I wanted to know what the other people she was interacting with were thinking. But that didn't really make sense as why I wouldn't like it because it is almost exactly like life: you get the point of view of one person as you talk to them and sometimes you don't ever get a chance to ask other people involved what they are thinking. Plus, I love reading things my friends have written, and that is almost always just them pondering or ranting or stating events of the day. Then I thought maybe it was the time

period, or the context, but I realized that couldn't by why I didn't like it as much as I thought I would either. For some reason I really love hearing about the past, and wars are always the most exciting to learn about. I know they wouldn't ever be the most fun to live through because it would be terrifying, but it is always fun to hear the strength of those who had to go through their ordeals.

But then again, perhaps that is part of the reason I didn't like Anne Frank: she didn't talk about the strength that everyone had during their time. She talked about being scared and about how difficult it was, how much the quarreled over everything, and about how she was either always mad at someone or they were mad at her. While she mentioned how she tried to keep a happy face and knew that everyone else around her were also trying to keep happy faces, I think I saw more of what was going on behind the face than I really wanted to. It was rather intimate with the author sometimes, and I could relate to what she was saying or feeling. But there were a lot of times that I couldn't relate to her or step into her shoes and understand why she reacted the way she did. I love being able to see the world through other people's eyes, and in a moment when it should have been easiest to do so since she was giving all the details she noticed or wanted to remember, I had the most difficult time understanding what she was going through, or even imagine the experience. She had so many dull details that I would love to hear about in other's lives but did not really interest me much. I wondered more what language she was writing and speaking in more than what she was saying sometimes. Other times she would mention famous people of the time or events going on around the world, and I would want to know more about those than the things she was talking about.

But what I thought about most as I was reading about Anne Frank's life was what others would think of me if they read my diary (or my blog which is almost synonymous) in 60-something years. Would they really care about the people I interacted with, or the things I did on a daily basis? Did I explain things exciting and vividly enough that they could see what I saw? How many times did Anne turn to her diary in frustration and vent there because she had no one else to turn to? I read those entries with a callous calm which stopped me from reaching the same emotional state she wrote it in. If someone were to read my rants, would the be able to truly understand how frustrated I was at a person or an event? But what kept bouncing around the most was, is my life interesting enough for anyone to read? I know Anne is interesting to many because she lived through such a monumental era of the world's history, but would my life count for anything to random readers? I seriously doubt it, and sometimes I doubt if my life is actually interesting to those few who I know have access to my blog and have ever used that access. Those are my friends, and I wonder if they care what is going on in my life or my mind as I write about the trivial things I do around the house or the city. I know I would care about what they are doing and thinking, but that's because I love all of them. And they probably wouldn't write as much as I do, so it wouldn't take so long to get to the point of stories. Reading Anne Frank really made me look into myself and ponder why I react the ways I do, and whether I should do more and post less or whether I should care.