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Maybe the first thing that most people would get shocked is that I rate with only 3 stars one of the best selling books of the 20th century (and now 21st century too) and even more, a book about the Holocaust.

First thing that I learned about this book is honesty.

Anne Frank teaches us all about honesty, about telling what you really think, and so I am doing the same.

For starters, I wonder how many people really, I mean REALLY read the book, because to rate with 5 stars a famous book that everybody tells you that it's a book that all people should read, and then they got in this commnunity for readers and maybe they feel the compromise to make the rest to think that you really read the book.

If not the case, hey, I don't see why anyone can be offended by this comment, and it's true, I don't see either anyone who will complain, since to me it would be only a defense mechanism behind their own guilt of really not reading the book but making the rest that they did.

I didn't think about this scenario but commenting about other thing with a reader friend, that thought stuck in my mind.

I invested so much time in that because, one has to be honest, the book is tedious since it's not really a novel, it's a collection of diary writings without a coherent line of constructing a story, even you need editors' further notes to know what happened to the people in the Secret Annex since obviously, Anne was unable to tell the final events.

So, since it's so tedious, I wouldn't be surprised that some reader tried to read it but at the end they just rated with 5 stars to denote that they are "cultured" readers that they appreciate the book as one of the most important books of the 20th century.

Between the passages, you learn a lot of things. The first thing that surprised me it's how this diary collection that it was written in the 40's, in Holland, by a teenage girl, almost anybody can relate to the comments and you don't feel them as outdated.

Sometimes if you read an "old" book, you sensed the outdated of the prose, selection of words, etc... but here I didn't feel it. This diary could be easily being written in present time and I don't think that it would change at all. I think that it was one of its strengths since I am sure that it will be as relevant for many more time.

Other thing that surprised me a lot was how much Anne Frank (and by association, the rest of the group in the Secret Annex) were informed about the events in the war, I know, they had a radio, but from stuff that I had read about WWII, there were certain elements of the information that people weren't aware.

I mean, at many moments, they denote a certainty that Jewish people were murdered in the extermination camps, of course if you call them "extermination camps", of course you know that people got killed there, but that's a term used by me, now, they called them labor camps, and so far I read, Jewish people really thought that they will receive "baths" when they were really gassed or burned to death, and it's kinda logical thing since if they were so certained about their deaths, there would be riots on the ghettos to flee in mass and they wouldn't march without protest to the gas chambers and the ovens. Even, Allied forces used espionage methods to know from Nazi prisoners what was happening to the Jewish people on the camps.

Anyway, also, there are elements like the assasination attempt to Hitler that they were aware that it was made by their own generals. I don't think that kind of stuff would be informed so easily since it was a clear fact of how divided was the opinions of the high ranking staff of the Third Reich.

I am not saying that the diary is not authentic as some dumb people commented that the Holocaust didn't happen.

The Holocaust happened.

It was real and we never forget that to avoid that it would happen again. I am just commenting that surprised me how well they were informed about key sensitive info of war events taking in account that they were a bunch of people living hidden for like 3 years in an isolated annex of a building.

I know, they got visits by the people that helped them but even so. I am not questioning its authenticity, just expressing my surprise when I read it. There were other things here and there that I was surprised by the use of terms like "diet: low fat", geez! I didn't know that in the 1940's they used terms like that in the 1980's were like the rush of "healthy food", but again, I supposed it's the effect that stuff that we think are new, they are just recycled and labeled as "new".

I am amazed that this book is banned in some schools, okay, there are comments relating to sex and sexual preferences, but so what? If a teenage girl from the 1940's can think about stuff like that while she was isolated with a war outside, don't you think that teenagers of today can think just the same?

I think that books like this one can help them to know that they are not alone, that they are not weird for thinking things like that, that was normal in the 1940s and it's normal now too.

I was amazed that the group tried to "live normal", I mean, kids making school work and so. I think that in such extraordinary circumstances, they needed to do extraordinary things like to make circles and to talk in group and hearing all about topics. I mean, they were like trapped and living together, really too close in the sense of physical space and yet, nobody cares about what Anne thinks or what she has to offer? Geez! Sure, they need to be really still and in silence, usually at day, but they should like making a "tribe", I don't know, I am babbling, but to try to live like regular families was evidently wrong for the sanity of their interrelationships.

What didn't surprised me were behaviors like trying to hide food or keeping money from the group. In times where the group work were essential to survive, the human selfishness risen as a second nature.

Resumming, I just want to explain that my rating is based on my "entertaining" experience while reading the book and the format of the book itself.

And this didn't have to do with my respect for the subject of the Holocaust and its terrible events.