Book 18 - The Book Thief

Guys - if I can make it to 21 books this year (half my original goal) than I will give myself a solid pat on the back. It is hard to maintain a New Yorker subscription and deal with the ever present temptation of an iphone while trying to read all the books.

Anyway - this was probably not the book to finish reading on the morning after Thanksgiving, alone on my couch with a stabbing pain in my belly potentially caused by a (self-diagnosed) swollen lymph node. Oh the tears, they did fall.  It was not quite as ridiculous as Little Bee, but I guess what did I expect from a book about the Holocaust?

Image (via)

The schtick of this book is that Death is the narrator, which I will give bonus points for, as it is both clever and very appropriate for the subject matter - even though I found it to be kind of a tedious bit after awhile.

The characters in this book are so wonderful and they are that way because this duder, Mr. Zusak, has a way with the descriptors, let me tell you. I love the little phrases that so accurately depict things.  It makes me want to study people and write about them.

There are a lot of design decisions that were made that I could have lived without, but there's a part in the middle that involves pictures that I want.  I want framed prints of it in my house (if that wasn't so morbid and strange). They are all so simple and just perfect.

Image (via)

Books about the Holocaust will always be devastatingly sad, because, like a book about the Titanic, you kind of have some idea where its going. But this book was just as much about being a girl who truly loves books as it was about horrible things happening.

It was strange, if you asked me if I liked it while I was reading, I would have probably just shrugged and said, "meh," but it kept me reading.  I don't know if its that I did not want it to end, due to my premonitions of what would happen, or if it really had just gotten under my skin and taken hold of me.

Now that its over, I cannot imagine reading it again, but I know that eventually would want to just revisit the pictures and descriptions of all these people who make it what it is.