R., the Book's Sponsor, Comments on City of Thieves

I'm not really interested in Blogging myself, but I have no objection to your
putting one up about our book group. I did check it out, however, just because I had sponsored the last book, so I felt more of an obligation. I was really more interested in letting YOU know what happened at the meeting. The blog (and by extension--you) did not really capture the jist of the evening. Even though the book itself was considered a 'lightweight' read (even though enjoyable)--it was a foil for an interesting discussion about the Russian people in general and the
Russian people in this specific situation (the Leningrad siege). The author
researched this very carefully and all of the characters and situations were
based on his findings. Benioff had read many diaries of the survivors of this war--and so got a lot of first-hand information.