Guardians of the Louvre

Guardians of the Louvre by Jiro Taniguchi, 136 pages.
The protaganist, a Japanese artist who is visiting Paris after attending a Comic convention in Barcelona, falls ill. His fever dreams may be carrying over into his visit to the Louvre several days later, or he could be meeting the secretive guardians, and meeting long-dead artists. It's hard for him to be sure. The art is beautiful and the story is interesting.

Stalingrad

Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor, 493 pages.
Beevor does an excellent job telling the story of the German Army Group South, particularly General Paulus's Sixth Army, during the 1942-1943 campaign. Beevor uses newly opened archives, letters, and interviews to tell the story of a battle that cost hundreds of thousands of lives of soldiers and civilians and changed not only the course of the war, but also, according to the author, changed the dynamic at the Tehran conference and set the stage for the Soviet's post war ascendancy.
Stalingrad was a turning point for Hitler and for Stalin. Hitler, as he sent paper divisions in as reinforcements, and concocted impossible re-supply airdrops, was no longer to be seen as an infallible leader or a military genius, and Stalin, once his army was victorious, was able to take credit again, and claim to the infallible leader again. Stalingrad, as a place and as a battle, was a series of  stories that are horrifying on many levels, several those stories are told well here, many more are mentioned; there are fleeting scenes of cannibalism among the most wretched, there are glimpses of virtual walls of frozen corpses, and a glance at the 944 children who lived through the long battle. The city on the Volga river, and much of the surrounding area, was reduced to rubble. Observers after the siege was broken reported being unable to tell which were natural changes in the topography and which were bomb and shell craters. A fascinating book.

Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir

Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir by Amy Kurzweil, 298 pages.
Kurzweil tells the story of her anxiety-laden childhood, of her relationship with her mother and with her grandmother. As Kurzweil grows, travels to Israel, and to Stanford, she relates more of her grandmother's story. Grandma Lillian Fenster was born Luba Skorka, and was confined to the Warsaw ghetto when the Nazis came. She had blonde hair and could pass for a gentile, and was able to sneak out of the ghetto to find food for her family. She alone of her family survived the Holocaust.
Kurzweil's art is interesting and moves the story along well.

Another Brooklyn

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson, 175 pages.

Woodson's Another Brooklyn is a beautiful and heartbreaking story about growing up someplace else with someone else, leaving behind people and places that were the most important to you. It is August's story, when it is just her and her brother, and her father. Each night she tells her brother that their mother will join them in Brooklyn tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It becomes a story August shares with Sylvia, Gigi, and Angela as they grow up together, inseparable, and then apart. Woodson limns life's loss, loneliness, and betrayal in this spare, beautiful book, If you were lucky enough to see the author at Lit in the Lou on Saturday, she even told you how to read this book, "the white spaces mean your supposed to stop, take a breath, think about what you read. The italics mean pay attention.' This turns out to be very good advice for reading this book (though not for competitive readers, overall, especially in slow month where you started out behind. Damn, I am never going to catch Christa).