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I was excited to be able to pick next selection for the DC area book club I joined when we came to the area. When The Book Thief by Mark Zusak came out a few years ago, I read lots of wonderful reviews around the blogosphere. As I was browsing the Regulator book store in Durham one fine day, I saw the Book Thief had come out in paperback and I made the purchase! I was excited and curious to finally begin this novel to see if it lived up to the buzz. After reading quite a few "okay books," I was
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On Friday, my book club chose this book for March, and I picked it up on Saturday at the library. It is now Sunday, and I finished the book this afternoon. I was taking a break this weekend before writing two more papers and a take-home final and I thought, it’s been a really long time since I just got lost in a book for a day or so. So I did.
Besides the fact that I do NOT like sad books, I had been putting off reading this book because it was about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. I feel like t ...more
Besides the fact that I do NOT like sad books, I had been putting off reading this book because it was about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. I feel like t ...more
I loved this book. For some reason, even though this book has been on my radar for a while I was always a little hesitant to read it. I think I wasn't in the mood for the heaviness of a Holocaust book. However, I wish I had gotten there sooner. I was finally inspired after I had to read one of Zusak's other books (I Am The Messenger) because it was assigned to my students for summer reading. Growing up I always knew about the Holocaust but I'm not used to hearing a story from the perspective of
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It kills me sometimes, how people die.
At first I thought this was going to be another of those woe-is-me type stories of somebody living with abusive foster parents. Fortunately it turned into something much more than that, although it never reached the heights it could have.
Having Death as narrator was nice although I felt more could've been done with this; at times you completely forget and it's just like a random third person narration.
Things started to tail off into the realms of boredom aro ...more
At first I thought this was going to be another of those woe-is-me type stories of somebody living with abusive foster parents. Fortunately it turned into something much more than that, although it never reached the heights it could have.
Having Death as narrator was nice although I felt more could've been done with this; at times you completely forget and it's just like a random third person narration.
Things started to tail off into the realms of boredom aro ...more
An interesting YA novel set at the start of WW2 in Germany. We follow Leisel, a young German girl, and her family. I liked this because it offers another perspective than the Holocaust works I'm familiar with -- we see how it affects regular Germans, as opposed to seeing things from a Jew's point of view.
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At first I found the writing style a little hokey, but it grew on me, and I came to appreciate it, as well as the unique perspective of the narrator, as an effective device for portraying the basic sentiment of the book: that there can be glimpses of light and air even in an impossibly heavy environment.
I do not know what the big deal is with this book. It was kind of boring to me, and I hated the writing style. It wasn't *bad* but I don't think it deserves the crazy hype it's been getting. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood to read a book about WWII.
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Jan 18, 2009
Alisa
marked it as to-read
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review of another edition
Shelves:
started-and-stopped,
ya
Mar 04, 2017
Jessica
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
Shelves:
book-riot-read-harder-challenge-201
