I finished this book moments ago.

But I can safely say I think it will stay with me for the rest of my life.

This is an astonishing book on the courage and the strength of the human spirit. If you're like me, I put off reading this book because I was worried it would be all about war, or too depressing or too serious for me to read as a young person.

I was so wrong. This book is heart-warming, and uplifting, and all of those cliche words that I have to use to describe it. Anne Frank is bold and sassy and moody and insightful. She's a budding writer, feminist and a serious thinker.

This book is sad, of course, and I knew how it ended, but that didn't change the way I read it.

Six months if you asked me what I thought of non-fiction, I would've said it was dryer than fiction, and just not really my thing - who wants to read about every day life when I use reading to escape it?

But while this book is so domestic, there is nothing everyday or ordinary about it.

If you haven't read this book, do it. It will be so worth your time.

Anne Frank feels like a friend now. A friend I'll miss.

I hope this book never goes out of print. ( )

It was impossible for me not to feel a heavy heart when I closed this book. I think the last quote in the afterword sums it up perhaps the best - "Her voice was preserved," Ernst Schnabel wrote, "out of the millions that were silenced, this voice no louder than a child's whisper....It has outlasted the shouts of the murderers and has soared above the voices of time."

Anne Frank was an amazingly courageous, determined, and free-spirited young woman. Her dreams of growing up and becoming a published writer, her fascination with Hollywood, her animosity and feelings of difference from her mother...all marked her as many teenaged girls are marked. Yet her strength in the simple things such as looking outside the dirty, dusty window at the tree, which she kept recording changes of in wonder, and her undying faith in God and the importance of morality and keeping hope would put some of us to shame as we tend to pity ourselves in much more trivial ordeals.

It is true that at times my mind wandered with this book -- after all, it is a diary where not much can really happen. She is stuck in a secret annexe with seven other people for a number of years, so little can occur. Even so, her ponderings on faith and justice, her outlook on life and self-improvement, and her essays on improving oneself and changing the world one person at a time is encouraging.

While some parts lapsed, the book grew more interesting toward the end. I don't think this was because it was coming to a head, but rather because as she aged and matured she began to open more of herself up and to dwell on a variety of important, difficult issues. I felt a tugging of heart at the sweet crush between her and Peter, the budding teenage romance and friendship. I liked the companionship and strength she drew from her older, quieter sister, and her father seemed like an admirable man and role model. Her mother seemed to love her children and her husband and, although told through a rebelling teenagers words, seemed also admirable.

It's bittersweet that her death was met only two months before the war ended, and they had made it in hiding so very long, but I like to think her courage still held up through everything. While she never grew up to become the published novelist and visit France to study art, or to be an independent woman who would be "more than just another housewife," she did pen a diary that would impact the world more than any piece of fiction ever would. A book that not only has lasted the test of time, but that shall always do so -- filled with hope, young love, promise, and a determination to remain yourself no matter the external circumstances. ( )

I feel absolutely horrendous even rating this. The three-star rating is only based on what it made me feel. Because (quite obviously) I knew the outcome before the beginning, I read the whole thing with this horrible sense of dread in my stomach. To be honest, I think I just was too young to be capable of dealing with a lot of the stuff in this. Not that I think it shouldn't be read at a young age, I just think the benefit of having seen something of the world might improve my ability to "place" this, as it were. ( )

I feel absolutely horrendous even rating this. The three-star rating is only based on what it made me feel. Because (quite obviously) I knew the outcome before the beginning, I read the whole thing with this horrible sense of dread in my stomach. To be honest, I think I just was too young to be capable of dealing with a lot of the stuff in this. Not that I think it shouldn't be read at a young age, I just think the benefit of having seen something of the world might improve my ability to "place" this, as it were. ( )

Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl is one of those books that I have heard of since I was a wee lad and never got around to reading until now that I am no longer a lad (but still rather wee in stature). A few weeks ago I was looking at one of those “Books to Read Before you Die” lists (I forget which one, there are so many such lists) and Anne Frank’s “Diary” is featured quite prominently. It reminded me that if I were to be hit by a meteorite or some such personal calamity as I go foraging for lunch I will have missed reading this book and in spite of having it in my TBR for years. So I read it.

I am assuming that the 1995 translation by Susan Massotty from Dutch to English is an accurate one as there is no mention of it being poorly translated in the online resources (Wikipedia etc). Under this assumption it is interesting how Anne’s narrative sounds rather like something written by an average teenager at the beginning of the book and progressively become more thoughtful, philosophical and even profound towards the end. This is remarkable because the diary only spans just under couple of years (1942-1944). Her prose is very easy to read, the ordinariness of the language and much of her thoughts belies the fact that this is probably the most famous diary ever written and it follows that Anne must have been an extraordinary girl.

Most of the diary is a depiction of Anne’s day to day life among the seven other people she was in hiding with in a secret annex behind a company’s building in Amsterdam. Some of the diary’s entries are more interesting than others. Anne starts off sounding giddy and perky then as the months in hiding drag on and on she becomes angsty, sad, afraid and miserable. Towards the end of the book she becomes happier as she falls in love with a boy in her group of fugitives and the tide of war turns against the Nazis.

The book made me feel a little claustrophobic at times as Anne’s group of eight fugitives is stuck in the annex. Her depiction of air raids and burglary is vivid and frightening. As time goes by Anne’s circumstances begin to worsen, food becomes scarce and relationships within the group begin to deteriorate. The book does become a little repetitious at times but then this is not a work of fiction and life is repetitious, especially under the circumstances Anne was living in where life tends to be either static and boring or alarming and frightening. This being non-fiction and I had no idea where the book was going, though from the preface I already knew it would not end well for Anne and was kind of dreading the end of the book. In a novel you would usually get some kind of foreboding passages from the author but in real life momentous things can happen very suddenly. So I was reading this diary until it suddenly ended without any kind of signing off from the author. It felt as if the Gestapo suddenly showed up to arrest Anne in mid sentence. That is the most frightening part of the book for me, the stoppage that came out of nowhere. The Afterward (not written by Anne) is truly shocking and heartbreaking. So much so that I doubt I can ever bring myself to reread this book.

My audiobook edition (cheap if you buy the Kindle edition first) is read by American actress Selma Blair, I remember her well from the movies Cruel Intentions and Hellboy. Initially I felt that I would have preferred a British narrator, someone like Kate Winslet perhaps; obviously there is no good reason for this as Anne was neither British nor American. However, Ms. Blair did a good job and soon she was the voice of Anne Frank for me.

Definitely a five stars book but I am not sure how heartily I can recommend it as it makes me kind of maudlin. Poor Anne, she deserved better. ( )