The Book Thief (read it read it)

I normally don't like to review books, because I am more than slightly obsessive when it comes to literature and I tend to convince myself that virtually every book I read is THE BEST EVER. When you call every book you read "my favorite," it tends to lose credibility over time. I try to abstain. The key word is "try."

I started reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak five or so days ago. I'd heard that it was good, and I liked what I'd read of it, but to be honest, I was kind of trying to avoid finishing it because I had a pretty good idea of how it would end, and as far as I was concerned, I did not like that ending. Actually, it took me about that long (five days) to read half the book. There are some books where I sit down and read it all the way through, or if it's longer, I finish it in two or three days; I didn't read very much each day. Yesterday, though, I told myself that I was going to finish it, and I did - at 1:30 am this morning. I got to a certain point in the book where I literally could not stop reading. (I know people tend to say that a lot, but it's true: there was more than one occasion in which I was honestly reading through my tears.)

Of course The Book Thief is sad. (It takes place in Nazi Germany during World War II, so I don't know what else you could expect from it.) Historical fiction tends to turn some people off, so let me just say that I really am not a big history fan. I am very interested in current events, but history bores me to death. I know it's important, but for the most part, I just cannot stand learning about it. WWII is one of the only major events that I think is interesting, in a morbid but strangely transfixing way, but I still don't like sitting down and reading a textbook report on the war. Personally, I can stand historical fiction in certain contexts - for instance, To Kill a Mockingbird describes a very specific time period, and I truly believe that it's one of the most influential and beautiful books ever written - but I hate reading about wars. I can't stand it. They all tend to be either a) piles of facts with a few fictional people thrown in or b) preachy. I rarely find them to be truly sad, because it's just person after person who dies, and as awful as that is, it loses impact as the bodies pile up. However, The Book Thief manages to avoid both. It doesn't turn people into statistics, it doesn't throw facts at you. I think that coming into the book, you don't need to be a WWII history buff (I'm not). As long as you have the basic information about WWII - when it happened, who was killed, who Hitler was - you should be able to follow along.

The New York Times called The Book Thief "the kind of book that can be life changing." When I first read that, I scoffed at it. How can one book about WWII change my life, seriously? This may sound cheesey, but after reading it, I feel like it kind of has changed my view on WWII. Not in a "well, at first I didn't think the Holocaust was that bad, but now I do" kind of way - obviously I was well aware that the Holocaust was unspeakably terrible. But it's hard to process that information. I'm sure most of us know that over 6 million people - mostly Jews - were slaughtered. 6 million people is horrible, but it's also incredibly hard to wrap my head around. How can I truly comprehend how big 6 million is? Sure, I know it's big, but in the end, it's just a number. The Book Thief made me wrap my head around that number. I promise you, I have a completely new level of respect for the non-Nazified Germans. Here, in 2009, we can easily criticize the WWII-era Germans who didn't stand up to Hitler, but I'm beginning to understand how much of a sacrifice it could be to simply join the Nazi Party just to protect your family. It's amazing how many reluctant Nazis there were, the people who had always doubted Hitler and the people who found their own ways to defy him, whether it was as simple as clapping dutifully and nothing more at a Hitler Youth parade or as profound as hiding a Jew in their own basement.

Basically, The Book Thief follows a young German girl called Liesel from the beginning to end of the second World War. (She's about 9 at the beginning of the novel and is 14ish at the end.) The book is narrated by Death, and although you'd think that that would either be a) cheesey or b) unneccessarily depressing, it's neither. We quickly learn how Death is almost humanlike, a reluctant workaholic, a sympathetic if stressed-out laborer. He questions his job as much as any of us would. You can look up the summary of the book on Google or Amazon if you want; I'm infamously horrible at summarizing (I either give too much away, don't give enough away, or go off on tangents that never cease to confuse people, so unless I'm forced to, I generally don't bother).

You should know that I am neither iron-hearted nor completely sappy. I often get a bit teary during sad novels or sad movies but I very rarely cry, even when people die. However, I cried so much while reading The Book Thief. The last time I've actually full-out bawled during a book/movie/whatever was while reading the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in which Certain Things happen to Certain People who happen to be some of my Favorite Characters (yes, I was more sad when That Thing happened than pretty much all of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And I was pretty freaking depressed all the way through HP7, so that should tell you something). I was really not expecting to be so entirely moved by the last quarter of The Book Thief, but it was just some of the most touching, gorgeous, perfect, tragic bit of writing/storytelling ever. I will tell you right now that there are deaths in the novel - again, it's WWII, it'd be weirder if there weren't deaths - but the part that got me the most involved no deaths at all. I think that for me, at least, crying is a bit of a chain reaction; once I start it's easy to keep me going. But, again, it's not easy to make me start crying in the first place. I read the sad parts late at night/early in the morning while I was wearing my glasses (I wear contacts, but I don't wear them while I'm sleeping, so I had to wear my glasses in order to see anything on the page) and I literally had to wipe off my glasses two or three times because my tears had made the lenses all wet and blurry and impossible to see through.

I realize that the whole DEATH! SADNESS! MISERY! thing may not be a strong selling point, but this is one of the few books that I feel completely confident in telling you that you must read it. I can almost guarantee that it will alter your perspective on WWII, but even more than that, it will alter you perspective on people. It is just such a freaking good book, it should be required reading for everybody, everywhere.


Again, this has already been obnoxiously long, so I'll answer the questions on Friday (I promise I'll do it this time)!

:)