One star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music and literature. Today we take a look at Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl:
The story of a teenage girl who spent some time in an annex and found out about love, sex and everything else related to that age group could have been quite interesting, but Anne Frank’s personality and written style is a bit weak. I think this book has been way overrated. Sure it’s sad that one had to be stuck under such circumstances at that age, but let’s face it, their situation was not the worst: people brought them food, they had a radio, books, pens, magazines and even partial freedom to fall in love. From all the positive criticism given on this book, I was very disappointed. Anne Frank may have become a big writer, but only because she was Jewish and “suffered” during the Nazi era, not because she was a particularly good writer. So if you’re in for feeling sorry once again for the Jews, do read this book, but if you’re looking for a literary masterpiece, then don’t even bother to pick this book up.
This is the worst book I have ever read!!! I started it with an interest toward the Holocaust. Anne Frank never talked about anything even relating to this major historical event in her short life. Anne Frank did describe her sexual attraction to females(p.117). She was obviously very flirtatious, which I wouldn’t have minded if she had not filled almost half the book with it. Overall, Anne Frank was shockingly perverted, bad-tempered, and not very smart. Many teenagers act this way, but I have never met anyone who went to that extreme, and I have never met anyone who wrote it in a diary so descendents would be forced to read it. Even if that part was not in there, the book would still be horrible. She always writes about the same thigs. It is boring! So if you want to read this book you may, but I would like to warn you about this.
This is probably one of the worst books I have ever read. I have neither found the carm of it or the point of the book. Firstly, this book does not really show or deal with the Holocaust. It is about a girl who is growing up! Being the age of fourteen I have not been able to relate to her in any which way.Secondly, the book is very boring. She goes on endlessly about her bordemn and the fights that happen in the Annex. Lastly, it does not really share anything historical about the Hollocaust except for the idea of hiding. Overall I found this book pointless and very irrelevent. I have read much better books sbout the Holocaust that deal with many historical events. If you really want to learn more about the Holocaust I would recommend For Freedom:The story of a French Spy and Number the Stars.
It was really really boring. Its about some girl and her life- who cares!?! It is a total girly-girl book. Too dull to even care. I couldnt even pay attention to what happened to her, why it was so awful. Oh Well, NEXT…
I think this is not the diary of hate and the holocost. We learn more about what its like to live with 6 other people instead. It scarcely metions the Holocoust- besides the afterword. And when Anne Frank talks about “Blushing” as she called it, I assure you that you will be thourolly disgusted. With as little action as possible in a book, I don’t think it is worth reading. If you really want to learn something about the Holocoust, just read the afterword! Or, if you love, dull, unexiting books, with very unplesent conversation. Read Anne Frank by none other than Anne Frank!
I didn’t like this book because it was boring. That’s all that needs to be said. It was very very very very very very very very very very very boring. If you have to read this book shoot yourself first.S
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, was unlike any other book I have read, it was a mix of everything. I don’t know why but it didn’t seem to keep my intrest. It was slow in the beging and then it kept going down hill. I am kind of disapointed because I am really interest in the Holocaust. I hope to find a better book.
I was forced to read this book twice, and the second time was even worse than the first. I understand that the Holocaust was a terrible event in history, but why does the school system make us read this terribly boring book? It is the worst book I have ever read. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but Anne Frank is more boring than the Home and Garden channel. She writes well, but why in the world should students have to read about her life as a young girl who does only one thing, complains. She goes on and on and on about NOTHING. It is like reading a broken record. I can’t believe that anyone could enjoy this book. I would rather watch professional bowling than read this book again. The day our english class had it’s final on the book I threw it in the trash. I have sworn never to read this book again. I can only recommend this book to people who enjoy reading the same thing over and over and over or are really bored. I wish I had the option of giving this book 0 stars because I would have done it in a heart beat.
I speaking as a 14 year old girl hated this book. I was forced to read it in 8th grade and it was a pretty good book but after a while it got very boring. I understand that this a horrific part of our history but come after so long of hearing about the same things a teenager will loose interest. So for those of you who are considering buying this book for enjoyment please reconsider for making your teenager read it.
hey i am 13 years old like her and had to read it for my school and i thought it was the most boring book i have ever read. I mean i totally respect the holocaust and i am not pregiduce i just hated that book and it totally wasted my time. THANK YOU
I know that the holocoust was horrible and something that we do not want to repeat again but Anne Frank is just BORING. im not prejudice and i feel horrible about the holocaust but what i don’t get is why is this girl complaining about her life? she had it way better off then some people. And why this diary is even famous. Anyone from the holocaust could have written a diary and be made famous. But a real good diary would explain the holocaust more then her own love life. Anne Frank is the most boring person i have ever seen in my life. When i was in grade 3 i didn’t even want to pick up this book but since i was forced to read it for a grade 7 school project….i had no other choice. i admit, there were some holocaust parts but for every PARAGRAPH there was about the holocaust…there were 30 pages about her “peeling potatoes” “feeling depressed” “studying” and “peter”. There was no action whatsoever and people say that you could actually feel what she was going through…i mean get a life people. I know it’s bad being cooped up and all..but….ughhhhhhhaoiwerualishfd bad book. And also…i can skip like 100 pages of the book and still know whats going on. I mean WHY AM I READING A BOOK THAT TALKS ABOUT HER WANTING TO REACH PUBERTY. seriously. so if you want to read a book about food, and 5 other people, family trees, and useless things that will never come in handy in your life then i urge you to read this book. but serseiouly you will have wasted your time. read some REAL holocaust books
Lets just start out saying, if I could I would give this book 0 stars.
Recently, I had to read this book for school. Trying to get through this book was phisicaly painful. There is no plot what-so-ever. She just skips from one topic to another.
This book is so boring and dry, that the most intresting part might be when she talks about peeling potatos.
If I could I would burn all of the copies of this book, so people don’t have to go through the hardships I did.
If you have at least one brain cell, you won’t buy this book.
This book was soo boring i read 2 pages then i burnt it. If you read this book i will personaly burn it for u……. SHe dint need to rite a fricken diary she just wanted to become famouse and she wanted people to feel sorry for her!!!!!!!
Having had the misfortune of reading the book and skimming over some reviews i have arrived to a few blasphemous conclusions:
100 times better than harry potter? To do some simple math- harry potter is nothing, zero, drivel. When one multiplies harry potter by a hundred one still gets nothing, zero, but a hundred times the drivel!
The only value this book has is …absolutely nothing but another opressed perspective which can be found among thousands of other diaries should one care to actually look.
Poignant? Not the least bit; it shouldn’t be anyhow. Only reason this book is popular is because of the human adulation of cruelty and enjoying to see this cruelty. Obviously all the effeminate readers of this must fell not sympathy or empathy, but pity- the acme of the expression of cruelty.
She figures out the true meaning of life? Spare me the stupidity- there is no one true meaning, and anyone who thinks that there is, is an idiot.
Indestructible nature of human spirit? Destroy the human and what?- you have destroyed the spirit.
Yes, we should especially listen to those who cannot even properly spell- a profound “a”ffect on everyday life? Taking this drivel seriously is cardinal idiocy.
A gift to us? In what way? Surely the perspective of her, if we listen to an authority, Hegel, is worthless- it is far too subjective.Shiver at the loss? Death is a necessary condition. Once you stop thinking of it as torture you might see it as liberation (not in the swinish Christian sense though).
Having read over the reviews I come to a conclusion: good material for a withdrawn, God-fearing, effeminate, sickly animal. I am sorry if I have damaged anyone’shigh strung sensitivity.
Comments
34 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.Do teenagers in America really burn books? I mean, seriously, burn a book? Especially this kind of book? Sweet FSM, now I know we are doomed…
What sickens me with these is how they have no idea what they are reading isn’t so much literature, but you are reading the thoughts of a girl who lived under the threat and died in the reality of a death camp – and not one of these idiots cottoned on to that horror. They are completely missing that ability to feel empathy – to live in another time in another person’s shoes.
And frankly that makes them no better than monkeys. Bald ones at that.
Whoooo – I need a Red Bull before I start making comments on Monday morning… snark snark snark!
Of course, most teenaged girls fill their personal diaries with analyses of the over-arching social and political events of their time…and both have the perspective to cover it dispassionately, and are prescient enough to know which parts will, in retrospect, be the most significant….
red bull or no red bull, you are right.
i was thinking the same thing.
oh
my
god.
when i read this book back in school, my teacher made it very clear that this is literally a young girls diary, not just a catchy title. Anne Frank wrote this diary with no intention of anyone reading it, let alone millions of people in the future.
These half wit amazon commenters were those jack ass kids with half a brain and big mouths you remember from grade school.
morons.
Once again, you’ve found a bunch of folks who completely missed the point. Despite the title, they seem to believe this is the work of a published author who should’ve punched up the plot for her intended audience.
But I was once a 13-year-old who wrote everything in my life down in a diary. It was a personally cathartic experience, as it was for Anne Frank no doubt. I was also about that old when I first read the book, and even then I knew that hers was more interesting and better-written than mine would ever be.
The bigger difference is that I’m still here, while my old diaries are not.
Holy Crap. I can’t believe so many of them whine about how “she had it better off than some people” and she shouldn’t complain. They’re like like “oh my God. Anne Frank should stop whining about being persecuted and forced to live in a room with her whole family and try putting herself through the TORTURE that is being reading her diary for my book report!”
If reading Anne Frank’s account of her life is boring, imagine what it must have been like actually living that life. I wonder if that thought actually crossed their (the reviewers’) head.
Wow. Amazing. I always thought most of those one-star reviews were people just looking to push other peoples’ buttons (like I tend to do) but it’s obvious these reviewers had no idea what they were actually reading.
entirely disturbing.
“So if you’re in for feeling sorry once again for the Jews, do read this book”
Try not to auto-categorize me into the trolls/idiots group, but s/he has a point.
Why do people read this?
” couldnt even pay attention to what happened to her, why it was so awful. Oh Well, NEXT…”
wtf?
Boring? Burning books? Weak writing style? What exactly do you guys think you’re reading? This is not a novel or a fairytale. These are true accounts of a young girl who used her diary to escape the harsh realities life. It seems that most of these silly comments are coming from teenagers. Once you understand that this book/journal was not meant for entertainment purposes, you can truly get to know Anne Frank and appreciate her diary left behind..
I take it they don’t even know she ended up in Auschwitz and died days before the end of the war?
Oh, Chris, you remain the shyte. Bless your compulsion to dig thru cybertrash and share your finds with everyone. xx
I have been visiting this site for a few weeks now (I think a Pink Floyd mention got it into a RSS feed or something). Usually I just laugh at the idiocy of people who believe that their personal preferences are what matter and have no true esplanatory schemes for how they obtained those personal preferences (one of the most useless statements is “everyone is entitled to their opinion”–not if you can’t back up that opinion!!).
This however was disturbing. Especialy the first and last posts. I got sick to my stomach reading these. Totally missing the point that this is not entertainment, but a look into the soul of a suffering human. It really has little to do with the Holocaust or being Jewish. But some people cannot realize that. In fact, none of these people can.
I will excuse this behavior because I believe that these posters are most likely around the age of fourteen. Hopefully they will grow into thoughtful, empathetic adults. Hopefully.
It’s no secret that teenagers are generally stupid. But I’m concerned about their teachers. Are they simply forgetting to mention to these rotten little buggers that this is not a book, it’s a diary? Because I can’t believe these kids are just THAT obtuse. Somebody’s not giving them the whole story.
In reply to misc, this book is generally assigned reading at around the age Ann Frank was during her confinement, when she wrote her diary. It’s also around the time when kids are taught more about the Holocaust, and have hopefully developed enough emotionally to put themselves in her place, and can formulate a personal understanding of what it was like.
I know when I read the book I started out with a vague knowledge of the facts of the war, and when I finished reading, I was conscious of the impact of the millions of human lives lost during the holocaust.
wow…im 14 years old and these people are idiots. how the hell would you like it if you had to go through her experiences? and plus she didn’t write this to “become famous for selfish puposes” she wrote it because it was her diary smart ones. it wasn’t a book, it was a diary!
I love how most of them say “This isn’t even about the holocaust!!!1″
The title says The Diary of a young girl.
sheesh.
I was expecting comments such as, “Lazy girl couldn’t even be bothered to finish it,” or, “I hope the sequel is an improvement.”
These idiots are the first to go in the revolution.
A lot of people commenting here sound like they haven’t even read the book themselves. Anne Frank DID want her diary to be published. She quite expressedly wanted to be a published writer, with the diary as her first work. She’s also as much of a silly teenager as those you complain about.
The book IS dull and ISN’T very well-written. There are plenty of better books out there, fictional and not, about Jewish children during the Holocaust.
@24: You’re still missing the point. Anne Frank’s diary is a primary historical document, rare for its first-person account. It’s notable that you recommend books “about” children; how many of those were actually written by children, instead of stories interpreted by an adult second party?
Taking her aspiration to be a published writer so seriously, and using this as a reason to criticize her diary as a literary work, is simplistic.
The point of publicizing Frank’s diary is to understand that entirely ordinary people lived during the Holocaust, that she *was* a “silly,” average teenager. Assigning this kind of work to teenagers, the kind of thing they could easily or are already writing themselves, is a pointed lesson.
You guys a stupid if you think this book is awsome. Wants you start reading you can` t stop. And, she didn` t write the book for fame, she wrote it for fun. How was she supposed to know it was going to be published? Diaries are supposed to be personall. Not so everyone can see it. I have a diary and if it gets puplished how was I supposed to know that?
Bye Bye. losers
you guys are suptied because her dairy is kool
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how do you like that losers.
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“It was really really boring. Its about some girl and her life- who cares!?! It is a total girly-girl book. Too dull to even care. I couldnt even pay attention to what happened to her, why it was so awful. Oh Well, NEXT…”
Kids want to be entertained, not educated. Teachers’ fault, parents’ fault, society’s fault, this is the utopian nihilism we’ve been chasing after for centuries. Nobody’s responsible for everything so everybody’s free to do and say whatever they want. Because children are immature and their ability to overcome base desires isn’t developed (and probably never will be), they spend most of their time chasing mindless distractions like TV and video games and text messaging (your friends have become mindless distractions, the whole world is a shallow circus of entertainment. Celebrate. Obama’s the president, everybody’s happy, no responsibility, someone else is handling the problems, we’re free! FREE!)
Nobody’s willing or able to point them to a more worthwhile way to spend their time, despite a wealth of literature on the subject. Authors who have struggled to find meaning in existence (and thus meaningful, non-distraction ways to use one’s time) include most of the important authors in the Western literary canon, from Homer to Schopenhauer to Dostoevsky, Camus and Shakespeare, Jung and Dante.
This entertainment/distraction mindset has crippled the development of our young people’s attention spans. The pharmaceutical industry capitalized on this by marketing Ritalin, a drugs which is similar in its composition and effects to cocaine. It’s FDA-approved so parents blindly feed it to their children, just like the rest of our society’s garbage. No responsibility. Even pigs know to care for their young; the pig-man apparently does not.
Look at the comments this kids are leaving: this is the world you’ve created, a world you’re just as responsible for as anyone else.
As far as the book itself goes, the kids are correct in noting it’s lack of literary merit or interesting content. There are well-written books about the Shoah, suffering in life, teenage awakening, and living in captivity. There is literally no good reason to read this book beyond appeasing graders at the compulsory brain-washing that is somehow supposed to be a substantial education.
Reading these reviews is like a challenge to try to think of a dumber, more insensitive thing to say. I don’t know if I can, but I almost want to try….
I am a 43 year old woman who read this diary for the first time. I know that, as a teenager, there is no way I could have understood it’s significance. Not that I wouldn’t have understood it, but I didn’t have the experience for it to have had the same impact. As a 43 year old woman I was mezmorised by it, and balled like a baby when I finished it. Part of the reason is that I have a 12 year old daughter who is spirtited, optimistic, and wants to be a writer someday. With every page, Anne Frank reminded me so much of my daughter, that this is one reasons this book had such an impact on me. I was wondering if I my daughter was mature enough to read it- to handle this type of content. If she wants to be a writer, Anne would make a teacher. But,I remember in 9th grade being shown the holocaust films and it changed everything for me. I, of course, had no idea mankind was caplable… So I googled “what age should a kid read this book” and I found this site. My husband said he was required to read this at 14 and it didn’t have much impact on him. I know it would now- he has 3 daughters. I think, really, this book is for adults. I think one of the things that makes it so heartbreaking is Anne’s innocence about her circumstances. She know what’s going on, but is occupied with 13 year old thoughts. The things she writes about the grownups in the house, the fighting, the bickering, you can tell that they are worried sick. They could only wish to be distracted with 13 year old thoughts instead of worrying about what parent have to worry about, their kids. Anne is thinking about what a 13 year old girl is supposed to think about, but is sadly interrupted by the horrible circumstances she finds herself in. Circumstances that none of us would ever want to see for our kids. I hope that the younger commentators here, who were required to read this diary, might consider reading it again someday. Maybe after you have kids. As to the older commentators, I think you missed the truly sad aspect of this young girls diary. By getting angry with these kids for not feeling what you felt when you read this, you failed to see her innocence.
Now yes, many of these reviews are ignorant or a bit off-base, but let’s be fair for one second.
Anne Frank’s story is an important one, both from a historic and a humanitarian perspective. But does that NECESSITATE that everyone who reads it will find it captivating and interesting, or even well-written enough to be digestible? Certainly not.
Imagine, if you will, that Anne Frank were a much much less intelligent girl. Would her story still be worth reading if every other word were the equivalent of “LOL”? Obviously this is not the case, but my point is that reading is a subjective experience.
No matter how interesting or informative a piece is, every reader has the right to just not like it. If that weren’t the case, we’d all be forced to read whole encyclopedias.
Have got to say i am in agreement with the majority of the 1 star comments for this diary.
I completely agree that it must have been hard, and it should ideally be read with perspective. But at the end of the day, the reviewers here clearly believed they were reading a brilliant piece of literature and were disappointed as a result.
I think the books value is purely to raise awareness of the implications of racism. The story behind it is good for this reason, but anyone who tries to read the whole thing expecting more than a normal diary will obviously be dissapointed.
To everyone who is saying that all kids and teenagers are “morons” and unintelligent, you’re not being fair! I’m thirteen years old, and I won spelling bees and awards for the stories and poetry I wrote and I also have great respect for the Diary of Anne Frank!
Most of the ridiculous rants on this site are definitely amusing. There’s even something oddly comforting about having a chuckle at the pervasive pairing of arrogance and stupidity. But the reviews of The Diary of Anne Frank are a sobering reminder that ignorance coupled with narcissim can create more than just frustrating encounters with an idiotic store clerk. The reviews by young, undoubtedly American, readers were depessingly predictable diatribes by a generation weaned on cultural chauvinism and cotton candy media. The consitency with which these teens minimized Anne Frank’s terrorizing captivity and murder and promptly went on to chastise her for “whining” about her life and boring them with her story was shocking. It is impossible to ignore the irony of these kids dismissing the soul squashing deprivation of social interactioin experienced by Anne Frank in favor of complaining about the hardships they were forced to endure by reading a book was not formatted like an MTV reality show. The fact that they seemed to blame her for not delivering a slicker, more tightly edited, account of her tragic life was too depressing to be amusing.