I am currently rereading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I haven’t read this since I was a kid and it’s interesting to reread it now.

I remember feeling like this book was really long as a kid reading it. And it’s not short, but it’s interesting how infrequently Anne actually wrote in her diary. Many months only have two or three entries. She even acknowledges that she generally only writes when something has happened that makes her want to write about it.

Anne definitely has sharp opinions in the diary about everyone from her friends in school before she had to go into hiding to everyone else in the annex. Sometimes it even comes off as mean, but I suspect that Anne was actually pretty nice to everyone and the criticisms of people are her venting her frustrations or scorn on paper in secret when she might never say any of them out loud. And that’s fairly normal for a girl her age in any situation.

It’s also interesting how inclined to optimism Anne and the others in the annex seem to be. Every advance the allies made renewed their hope that the war would be over soon. As frightening as the air raids she describes and the morale-crushingly laws restricting Jews from using public transportation and things are, the diary tends to have a thread of “the war will be over soon” throughout. It’s fascinating.