The Book Thief

Since I never write on my blog anymore because my life is not very interesting, I have decided to change it up and start writing about the books that I read. Hopefully it will help me remember which ones are good, which I should never read again, and maybe give suggestions for books others should read. My first book I will write about is "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak.

First I will say that I just barely put this book down. I stayed up way too late last night reading it and then continued reading as soon as I woke up this morning. I never even got out of bed or ate breakfast. This book is amazing and captivated me from the very beginning. The first chapter is titled "Death and Chocolate." The book is narrated by Death and he tells the story of a young girl in Nazi Germany. Death tells the story of Liesel Meminger, an illiterate girl who wants to read and loves stealing books. In the authors words, "I thought of Hitler destroying people with words, and now I had a girl who was stealing them back, as she read books with the young Jewish man in her basement and calmed people down in the bomb shelters. She writes her own story - and it's a beautiful story - through the ugliness of the world that surrounds her." It is unlike any other book I have read about the holocaust. Instead of focusing on the Jews in the concentration camp it tells another side of the story of Germans who hid their Jewish friends, those who didn't want to fly the Nazi flag, and of children who didn't want to go to Hitler Youth schools.

Overall I would say that this book is a must read. I will warn you though that you may want to be alone while you read the last part of the book. I may have been sobbing uncontrollably at the end, and not just the normal kind of cry. I mean the ugly, gasping, kleenex everywhere kind of crying. It is beautiful and sad all at the same time. I would give this book a 10 out of 10. I think it may have just become one of my new favorites.