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Loading... The Book Thiefby Markus Zusak
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This was the worst book I have read in a long time. It was so boring and dull I couldn't even finish it. ( )This book takes a look at World War II from a different angle, a street in a small town near Munich where a Jew is hidden from the Nazis. Liesel, Hans, and Rudy are well drawn characters. As someone who feels the WWII fiction genre has become oversaturated, I was pleasantly surprised by The Book Thief. Although fiction, I found myself thinking repeatedly of The Diary of Anne Frank. Death narrates the story. Liesel, the book thief, is a young girl who has lost her brother and her mother, landing on the steps of a foster family. She values books, words, as terribly important, as the tools to figure out how someone as horrible as Hitler could overtake a nation. Rather than being the hidden, she and her family hide a young Jewish man, whose father saved Hans', Liesel's foster father, life in WWI. The book's details feel authentic, and Death, ironically, adds some humorous insight into the human condition. I would recommend this book, but the book's format bothered some fellow serious readers I know. A great book - as someone who feels overexposed to stories from and about Nazi Germany, this was different. Wonderful for anyone, any age - particularly if they love the written word. Marvelous. This book lifts you up and crushes you at the same time. I can't wait to give it away - just to have someone share the experience.
The suggestion that 40 million people died because of the power of words might seem trite until one recalls the mendacious blabberings of the leaders of a war we are still fighting. The Book Thief depends too much on unnecessary devices to be a great novel, but it is certainly extraordinary, resonant and relevant, beautiful and angry. This over-praised, overlong novel is in trouble before it starts. The acknowledgments open with a tribute to someone “who is as warm as she is knowledgeable” and continue in the same saccharine manner. Unsettling, thought-provoking, life-affirming, triumphant and tragic, this is a novel of breathtaking scope, masterfully told. It is an important piece of work, but also a wonderful page-turner. I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is a moving work which will make many eyes brim. Zusak shows us how small defiances and unexpectedly courageous acts remind us of our humanity. It isn't only Death who is touched. Liesel steals our hearts too. The Australian writer Markus Zusak's brilliant and hugely ambitious new young-adult novel is startling in many ways, but the first thing many teenagers will notice is its length: 552 pages! It's one thing to write a long book about, say, a boy who happens across a dragon's egg; it's quite another to write a long, achingly sad, intricately structured book about Nazi Germany narrated by Death itself.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0375842209, Paperback)It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul. From the Hardcover edition. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:11 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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