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The Book Thief  

post #1 of 27
9/19/07 at 7:22pm
Thread Starter 
written by Markus Zusak. Has anyone read? I did an MDC search and didn't find a thread. I think this book may be my official favorite book of all time. I couldn't have asked for a better book to read after A Thousand Splendid Suns. Some books are hard to top but I really think The Book Thief is an absolute masterpiece.
post #2 of 27
9/22/07 at 9:46am
Yes, I've read this book.. I really, really liked it and the ending made me cry so much.

I keep meaning to buy The Kite Runner and then move on to A Thousand... so many books, so little time to read them


Peace
post #3 of 27
9/22/07 at 10:25am
Thread Starter 



I'm so glad someone else has read this book! Our library system is doing a project called "One Book, One Community." They are giving free copies of The Book Thief to anyone who wants one. There are events surrounding the book all fall that end with Markus Zusak coming for a visit. It's all very exciting!
post #4 of 27
9/22/07 at 12:43pm
Spoiler Warning.






I've read this book,well almost I left the last few pages as I was crying so hard I couldn't read finish it,I was literally sobbing when I was reading it,particuarly the part where most of the characters died when a bomb was dropped.
It's one of the most perfect and beautiful books I've read,it depressed me to though when you read about all the evil man can do and the horrors of war,the innocents killed.

It did also show how good and brave people can be though,like the family,they took in Max, or Rudy.

Max was by far my favourite character,with Rudy second.

I'll have to read it again now,ensuring I have at least 2 boxes of Kleenex beside me.
post #5 of 27
9/22/07 at 10:32pm
I loved it, it is really one of the best books I've read in years.

I was working in NYC when I read it, and on my way to work I saw half a bagel on the ground, and then a block later a danish in the gutter and I got so mad! I was thinking, how can you throw food away when people are starving--and then I came back to reality.

Also, I had lunch with MZ (for work, I worked in kids books) and he is AMAZING. Really attractive, shy, self-effacing, but smart and nice and interesting. And he has an Australian accent. He is the cutest the author I've ever met! He said that he rewrote the beginning of the book over and over again--at least fifty times before he worked it out with Death as the narrator.
post #6 of 27
9/25/07 at 5:30pm
ooooohhh, i really liked this book! just read it this summer. very, very good. i'm going to put it on the "strongly suggested by mom" book list i keep for DS. i didn't even know it's considered a YA book until after i read it. so clever, the narrated by death part. though i can't quite seem to explain that intelligently to other ppl. i always wind up getting an odd look when i try to say how the story's told...
post #7 of 27
9/25/07 at 7:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by madskye View Post
He said that he rewrote the beginning of the book over and over again--at least fifty times before he worked it out with Death as the narrator.

That is so amazing. I wonder how it would have turned out otherwise. This book absolutely consumed me : It is just morbidly perfect.
post #8 of 27
9/25/07 at 7:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by panamama View Post
ooooohhh, i really liked this book! just read it this summer. very, very good. i'm going to put it on the "strongly suggested by mom" book list i keep for DS. i didn't even know it's considered a YA book until after i read it. so clever, the narrated by death part. though i can't quite seem to explain that intelligently to other ppl. i always wind up getting an odd look when i try to say how the story's told...
Especially because Death is kind of a pleasant fellow, in the book. Sometimes even funny.
post #9 of 27
9/25/07 at 8:51pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by madskye View Post
Especially because Death is kind of a pleasant fellow, in the book. Sometimes even funny.

Funny and compassionate. The part where death said he carries soles like suitcase handles-except the children. Those he always carries in his arms.
post #10 of 27
9/27/07 at 11:46am
I love this book too! I was reading it on the train on my way to and from work and was sobbing in bits and the other comuters were looking at me as thought i was crazy

It's so well written Oprah should do it for her bookclub if she hasn't already!
post #11 of 27
9/27/07 at 12:50pm
I loved this book too - definitely one of my all-time best books. I have recommended it to many (with the caveat that they may cry at the end).

Fiction hasn't made me cry in years...and I was definitely sobbing at the end of this. Weird to say that and then talk about how GOOD it is. But it is. Good.
post #12 of 27
9/27/07 at 1:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by baltic_ballet View Post
It's so well written Oprah should do it for her bookclub if she hasn't already!

I totally agree. I wonder if she would consider it since it has been tagged young adult fiction. I definitely think it is an adult book. Very adult. Important for young and old!
post #13 of 27
9/27/07 at 1:52pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by baltic_ballet View Post
It's so well written Oprah should do it for her bookclub if she hasn't already!
Oh why not!?!? I just emailed oprah.com and suggested it. I really think that this book is important.
post #14 of 27
9/27/07 at 5:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luvmyboyz View Post
Oh why not!?!? I just emailed oprah.com and suggested it. I really think that this book is important.
So did I!

I got a generic response back stating that they recieved my email and they get alot of emails and they won't all get personally answered - also I don't think I explained the plot enough as I thought I would run out of room in their box; later I found a better description and am wondering if I should email that too.



I found this a review by by the Australian newspaper The Age: should I send it to them?


By Peter Pierce
September 10, 2005

The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak


ON THEIR way to Munich in 1939 to be given up to foster parents, Liesel Meminger's six-year-old brother dies and is buried beside the train tracks. Watching, Liesel acquires her first book - The Gravedigger's Handbook.

It will be one of the 14 that give solace to her, an abandoned child, struggling to survive in war-time Germany. Her father has been taken away, branded communist; her mother vanishes. Watching Liesel, whom he christens "the book thief", is the narrator of Markus Zusak's novel of the same name.

A prize-winning children's author, Zusak has made a daring debut as an author of adult fiction.

His narrator, who courteously introduces himself, but forbears to speak his name, is Death. His task is "handling souls to the conveyor belt of eternity" and soon he will be very busy.

It is Death who tells of Liesel's ordeal, "just a small story really", and of her resilience, of the moments when she almost comes within his reach.

The narrator is arch, and given to bad jokes about his profession, but he is also solicitous of his victims and wryly omnipotent. The deployment of this narrator gives to Zusak's harrowing evocation of the terrible events of war for German civilians the ageless colours of loss.

Liesel lives with the Hubermanns in the little town of Molching, outside Munich.

Her mama, Rosa, has "a face decorated with constant fury", while her father is the gentle house painter and accordionist, Hans. A veteran of the Great War, he is recklessly imbued with compassion for those who suffer in this one, in particular for the Jews.

Dachau is just down the road and Jews are paraded through the streets of Molching, "to concentrate", as Death jests. They shuffle along in a ragged column, selfhood fragmenting, destruction beckoning. The eyes of one of the older men "were the colour of agony".

The plain style of much of The Book Thief is punctuated by such vivid images. Brownshirts, members of the Nazi Party, marching through the town have "their faces held high, as if on sticks". A soldier back from the Russian front and tormented by the death of his brother there hangs himself. He "jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff".

On an adolescent's face, "pimples were gathered in peer groups". The narrator's gaze is detached, unsparing. He points out that he does not have a sickle or a scythe, and only a hooded robe when cold. Of his own appearance, he offers this: "You want to know what I truly look like? . . . Find yourself a mirror."

Liesel's struggles are those of any child in such perilous times - finding enough to eat, drawing comforts from such friends as Rudy Steiner, living through the increasing raids by Allied bombers. Moreover, she is also required to help the Hubermanns protect the Jew, Max Vandenburg, who arrives in November 1940 and hides out for two years in their shallow basement. He writes and illustrates one of her books, The Standover Man.

Eventually he leaves to spare the Vandenburgs from discovery and walks away to an uncertain fate.

Thus Liesel has to acquire her books from somewhere else. She chooses the library of the mayor's wife. This woman, a ghost and recluse since the death of her son in the last war, opens a little to life again by her complicity in Liesel's thieving.

Her books allow Liesel to distract those who huddle in the Fiedlers' basement during air raids. She "handed out the story" to them in instalments, not concerned about whether, or how, it will come to an end.

The Book Thief is a triumph of control, and for the most part of tact, although Death is at liberty to breach any decorum. Its oblique angle on the German homefront never exalts the courage of the young, but quietly tells of how days and months are managed.

Zusak has written, in his 30th year, one of the most unusual and compelling of recent Australian novels. He gives its last words to Death, who confesses "I am haunted by humans". Those whom we encounter in The Book Thief have that power over the reader, too.
post #15 of 27
9/27/07 at 6:10pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by baltic_ballet View Post

I found this a review by by the Australian newspaper The Age: should I send it to them?
That is an excellent review. Please send it! Here is a link from our library program. There it a short youtube reading that is cool. Part of the library program here this fall is a theatrical group coming for some programs. I really hope I can make it to one of them.

http://www.lcpl.lib.va.us/onebook07/links.htm
post #16 of 27
9/27/07 at 6:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luvmyboyz View Post
That is an excellent review. Please send it! Here is a link from our library program. There it a short youtube reading that is cool. Part of the library program here this fall is a theatrical group coming for some programs. I really hope I can make it to one of them.

http://www.lcpl.lib.va.us/onebook07/links.htm
Done! I had to do alot of editing to make it fit in their box (2000 characters) so I hope it makes sense - What i should have done is send it over two emails - too late for that now.

It such a great book - I do really hope they put it on the show.
post #17 of 27
9/27/07 at 6:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by baltic_ballet View Post
Done! I had to do alot of editing to make it fit in their box (2000 characters) so I hope it makes sense - What i should have done is send it over two emails - too late for that now.

Or I could have just sent them link and let them open and read it
post #18 of 27
9/28/07 at 1:56am
Thanks for the links Luvmyboyz - I really enjoyed reading Markus Zusak's site
post #19 of 27
10/24/07 at 11:20pm
Glad I found this thread, as I am supposed to be reading this book for my book club and am totally having trouble getting into it. Reading all the raving is just the kick in the pants I needed to give it another try. Thanks!

PS to LuvmyBoys, are you and I in the same book club and just don't know it? I'm in Loudoun too (saw your library link) and A Thousand Splendid Suns was our last book....
post #20 of 27
10/27/07 at 8:05pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtbuko View Post
Glad I found this thread, as I am supposed to be reading this book for my book club and am totally having trouble getting into it. Reading all the raving is just the kick in the pants I needed to give it another try. Thanks!

PS to LuvmyBoys, are you and I in the same book club and just don't know it? I'm in Loudoun too (saw your library link) and A Thousand Splendid Suns was our last book....

Hi Jessica!

Nope, I'm not in your book club...but I'd love to find out about it if it is open to new members. I haven't joined too many things here yet-we haven't even lived in VA for a year. We live in Leesburg.

I really, really enjoyed The Book Thief. I hope you can get more into it!
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