The Book Thief

Reader reviewed by Iryna

Its 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 Zusaks 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 cant resistbooks. 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.

I
picked up this book because 1) it won, like, a million awards so I
thought it must be good and 2) this was the next book in the book club
I take part in. I'm going to be honest with you: I don't like
historical fiction. Atleast, not most historical fiction novels but I thought that this book would be the exception to my rule. I was wrong.

Personally,
at first I hated this book. Sure the narrator (Death) was really cool
but that was the only thing I really enjoyed about this book. Markus
Zusak stuffed a lot of pointless information into this novel. Okay, I
have to give the author some credit -- it was well written pointless information. I'm pretty sure it was to build character development but I just kind of found it boring.

So, if I disliked this book so much why didn't I just stop reading it?

Well,
as I mentioned before, this was for a book club so I was set on
finishing it. And you know what? I'm glad I did. 150 pages before the
end it started getting interesting. I'm not going to give anything away
because you don't want the book spoiled.

So as a summary, the beginning was blah but the ending was good. I would give this book a B -.

Reader reviewed by Ashley

Liesel is taken to live with a foster family in a working class german neighborhoood after her brother dies on a train. She stole a book, the gravedigger's manual, when her brother was buried. During the years she lived with the foster family death tells how she steals more books, collects an interesting set of friends and deals with the war. This book just draws the reader in. At first it's a bit hard to grip what is going on, but then the story falls into place. It is also riddled with sadness and hardship of war and death, but also the delight of learning new words, reading and stealing books.