DBWI: RIP Anne Frank

Sad news today as Anne Frank, acclaimed writer, activist, and Holocaust survivor, died at the age of 89. I don't really know anyone who hasn't been touched by her work in some way, be it kids reading her various novels, activists inspired by her words, or historians for whom her diary provides invaluable insight. I just thought I'd create this thread as a memorial of sorts. What's your favorite Anne Frank book, and why?
 
Sad news today as Anne Frank, acclaimed writer, activist, and Holocaust survivor, died at the age of 89. I don't really know anyone who hasn't been touched by her work in some way, be it kids reading her various novels, activists inspired by her words, or historians for whom her diary provides invaluable insight. I just thought I'd create this thread as a memorial of sorts. What's your favorite Anne Frank book, and why?

Her book about her reunion and her further life with her father Otto Frank as the sole two survivors of their family - the shock, the sadness, the relief and joy all mixed up in one.
 
What's your favorite Anne Frank book, and why?
I know it is kinda cliche but i always liked her book "Home", where she described her experience in Israel and she explanied why in the end she chose to return to Germany
It is fashinating how she was able to describe both her anger towards her country for betraying her and her family and her inability to leave it forever
Also of course i love her articles about the war on Vietnam on how the Pentagon 's strategy wasn't different from the ones of the nazis
 
I kind of like her weirder, wilder pen name novels.

Like her novel about the slightly slow, special ed guy who eventually became a mafia safecracker, and who kept it simple and who mastered the code of direct, simple loyalty and being a standup guy. And who retired to Florida as a relatively young guy in his forties, and in a great humorous last couple of pages he had to really argue with and laugh with and even laugh at his CPA, all as part of insisting that they keep his investments simple.

Or her Roman à clef and send-up of Green Revolution superstar Norm Borlaug in which she made him both Aspie and into the English vice of consensual S&M. Yeah, wow, borderline litigious. A novel which was definitely out there. I guess it was okay since 2013 was four years after Borlaug's death and she used fictitious names throughout. But she did succeed in setting up a story in which someone wants something badly -- in this case social acceptance -- and has a difficult time achieving it. And she did carry the story through a number of twists and turns. And no, Borlaug was neither Aspergers-Autism Spectrum nor into the English vice. But I guess the thought experiment, or mischievous day dream as it were, did succeed in presenting him as more human.
 
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For me i would have to say in terms of her normal books I would say In hiding it is honestly powerful to see the comparison that she made between herself and the so called normal occupied people and a reminder that occupation was horrible form more than just people specifically targeted by the nazis.

for her weirder sides yeah cracker jack the mafia safecracker is a good favorite of mine.

outside of that she helped out in the creation of murder she wrote which helped my family learn english when we first moved to the states. the german version and english version are remarkably easy to go in between because of some of her influnece
 
My favorite Anne Frank book is the novel that was set in Auschwitz and Bergen-Beslan concertation camps titled Tanks that with its detached narrative that keeps drawing the reader deeper and deeper in to the story with its heart breaking chapter of the death of the older sister in the arms of the younger sister just as tanks from the American Army are coming in to view of the camp gates. I checked it out of the library when I was eleven years old thinking it was about tanks and I kept on reading the book because I wanted to find out why it was titled that.
I think that the fact that her Science Fiction novels and short stories that she wrote when she lived in Los Angeles during the late 50's to early 60's that were panned for being "Too soft and political" are now considered to be classics of the genre shows just how far ahead she was in predicating the current trend in the world today.
 
I read quite a few assigned books in high school but I can point to only two I liked - To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the great Coffee Shop by Anne Frank. The tale of six people who all spent a weekend at a secluded hotel in Switzerland in the late 1960s, all of different ages and life circumstances. My teacher swore that the character of Daniela, the former Italian Olympian who was a gold medal winner at the Berlin Olympics, was based on Frank, but I had already heard the story - Frank based the characters on people she met on three different trips she took, and this one was from a time in Florence.

RIP, Ms. Frank. Thank you for brightening my otherwise dreary high school experience and making a reader - and author - out of me.
 
Whilst her books and short stories are often good and great reads I have to say the things I enjoyed the most that had to do with her are To Be Frank (1992) and In the Shadow of Maus (2010).

If you haven't seen To Be Frank it's a rather brilliant documentary by Alexandra Frank, Anne's eldest daughter. It follows Anne before and during her trip to Stockholm when she went to pick up her Nobel Prize in Literature. The documentary mainly consists of a series of conversations between Alexandra and Anne as they discuss there relationship together and there lives in general. It's a good watch and surprisingly funny as well.

In the Shadow of Maus is a graphic novel by Art Spegielman as he discuss the aftermath of Maus. A major section is his awkward relationship with Anne Frank (who didn't appreciate Maus when it came out) and his less awkward relationship with Alexandra and Margret. The moments with her are always funny as Art and Anne verbally spar over the nature of comics. It's a recommended read for anyone interested in Anne.
 
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