The endless failure of me to appreciate some of these "classics"

The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig...a young girl's story of her family's arrest and deportation to Siberia in 1941 and the years until their return after the end of the war.  I won't make the obvious comparison--it doesn't compare.  It is interesting but not engrossing.  Only at the beginning when she has to come to grips with being locked in a cattle car for days; travel to an unknown destination; watered-down cabbage soup; a communal toilet (a slit in the floor); no water for bathing--only then are her memories sharp, painful, and alive.

The rest of the book is educational and full of details--but not told so that you can feel them and hear them and smell them.  (Quote stolen from Christy Marshall.)

Recommended only if you're a teenager needing a good book for a reading assignment.