A STORY ABOUT A STORY

This same lady about whom I wrote a few minutes ago offers this one too. She had read the ex-war prisoner's story and told me it was the best thing she'd ever read of this sort. That may be true and when she asked me to read it, I agreed to do so. I have read many true war accounts, and quite a few of this variety. Thousands of these get written by veterans and they never get published. The authors usually never know why not publication. Little do they know that it isn't the story that sells the book, but the vocabulary and what the author can do with that. (Seldom does the story give such promise that a publisher will buy and have staff rewrite it in suitable vocabulary.) I am expected to write something about this story and I will, beginning with all the good qualities I see. I won't say much about the other, except to mention he needed an expert editor before he published. It's really too sad that everyone couldn't have had my fifth grade teacher and therefore know the correct usage of sit/set, lie/lay and rise/raise. If you learn grammar as a young child, you don't forget it. 

I am now in the reading of this story and a thick book called The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This one reminds me of All the Light We Cannot See. I'll say more about that later.