Bookworm in the City

No. 13 – A banned book

Mijn kamp [Mein Kampf] / Adolf Hitler
(My Struggle)

I’ve already shared my thoughts about the banning of books and this book in particular, so for that, please see here.
The book itself..ugh, it became a DNF (did not finish).
After the first chapter things escalated quickly and the whole thing became unreadable: clumsy sentences due to the translation based on the old-fashioned German in combination with the author’s inability to write.
It’s hard to understand how more than 12 million copies of this book were ever sold.
It’s easy to judge the people who read this and didn’t stop what happened, because time creates distance and perspective, but it’s scary to realize that this book was very much a playbook.
Then again, current leaders also publish books that end up on bestseller lists and not all of them are good, and who knows what they will lead to.

Usually I don’t bother working my way through books that aren’t for me. If the story is bad, or too complex or too-whatever-it-is-that-makes-my-blood-boil, I label it DNF and move onto the next one.
As this is a banned book (edited, but still) though, I felt obliged to give it my best try, just because I strongly oppose banning books. But it was such slow goings that I needed an extension of the loan period and that turned out to be impossible because there was a reservation for the book. Yes, there actually was another reader who wanted to dig into this and to them I say: best of luck to ya.

To me, it meant a forced DNF and I’m fine with that.
Reading list box checked. Moving on.