The Book Thief in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Nov 04, 2012 Yolanda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This book rocked my world. It is so incredibly depressing but beautiful and magnificently written.

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Aug 14, 2015 Sue Thompson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-ultimate-favourites, historical-fiction, will-send-recommendations, kindle

This is a truly fantastic book and thoroughly deserves its place amongst the many great books lists that appear all over the internet and is most certainly a modern classic. I don’t do spoilers in my reviews and deliberately give as little away about the storyline as I possibly can however I feel the need to explain about the beginning: This was one of those books which I started, decided I couldn’t possibly read it, put it away, finally decided to try again a few years later and ended up loving This is a truly fantastic book and thoroughly deserves its place amongst the many great books lists that appear all over the internet and is most certainly a modern classic. I don’t do spoilers in my reviews and deliberately give as little away about the storyline as I possibly can however I feel the need to explain about the beginning: This was one of those books which I started, decided I couldn’t possibly read it, put it away, finally decided to try again a few years later and ended up loving it to the point I gave it 5 stars. I think it was the death concept which confused me and I know this has had a similar effect on a lot of others. On my first attempt I didn’t realise that it was death speaking, however the second time I had come to realise this and made it so much easier to get past the initial part and into the story itself.

My other main thought about this book is that it’s a YA book and as rule I don’t do YA. In my head I see YA books as unchallenging, focussing primarily on school, young romance or impossibly attractive people on an adventure, waving a sword and “everything works out well in the end” – This book proved all of my pre-existing ideas wrong. Yes some parts of it are quite ”young” but there are some very tough, almost “grown up” themes in here. It was well written and I genuinely developed feelings (good or bad) towards the characters, found myself desperate to get to the next page hoping everything would actually work out well in the end. A great page turner and it had me on the edge of my seat a few times.

My husband decided to play music as I was reading the latter part of this book, the timing couldn’t have been worse (or better, I still can’t decide which). Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” came on and that combined with the ending of this book had me in tears the music and the story seemed to match perfectly and turned me into a sobbing wreck. I’m not one for crying at books but this one did it (assisted by Metallica), a truly great ending, well written and very emotive. ...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Magoo rated it it was amazing

You must, must, must read this beautiful, heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting book about love, friendship and the strength of the human spirit. And Death as narrator is very clever and frequently funny.

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Aug 21, 2015 Marti rated it liked it

This makes me feel weird rating this a 3. I guess it's like a 3.5. This book wasn't bad. The writing was great and the story was interesting but if I wouldn't have switched to the audiobook I wouldn't have finished this book. The story moved really slow, and almost 100 pages into it I still wasn't hooked on finishing it. The audiobook made it easier to get through this, but for the most part the emotional attachment that a lot of people talk about still wasn't there for me. I enjoyed it, but I w ...more

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