I picked up Elie Wiesel's two volumes of memoirs, All River Run to the Sea and The Sea is Not Full. I have read his Holocaust novels: Night, Dawn.

Book one of the memoirs cover birth to Holocaust. Naturally, Elie's life story is quite sad. He lost his younger sister,
both parents, and his grandparents to the Nazis.

In spite of the Holocaust, he
chose to believe in God and continue practicing Judaism. He delves deeply into how to face the future when the God we pray to does not seem to
fix/rescue us.

Book two covers his life since 1969. A friend of mine was able to leave Russia after his (and others) intervention with the Soviet government to let the Jews go. She is not able to read the English version of the memoirs so she wanted me to browse for her brother's name. He was a prominent "refusenik."

I learned in this book about all the controversy in getting the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. established. Elie headed the Committee. What a headache.

I decided to go read a fantasy to lighten my mood. I picked up Terry Brook's Armageddon's Children about post-nuclear America. Global warming and pollution have trashed the entire environment, men have turned into killing machines, demons abound and magic too, people huddle in armed enclaves, light versus dark. Wow, what a not-lightweight book this is.

Okay, back to Elie Wiesel for light reading!