The Diary of a Young Girl
...I seem to have everything, except my one true friend. All I think about when I'm with friends is having a good time. I can't bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don't seem to be able to get any closer, and that's the problem. As I read The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time, two things really struck me. The first was that humans, ordinary humans, can turn cruel so quickly and completely. The second was that, even as an adult, I could see pieces of my own life in Anne's, because her writing, in so many ways, is ageless. It's one of the most famous memoirs of all time, so many people know the story: a Jewish family in Holland is compelled to go into hiding after the Nazi takeover, and the youngest daughter records their experiences in her diary. I had heard much about the book but put off reading it, due to my emotional experience with similar memoirs ( The Hiding Place, Night , and From the Ashes of Sobib...