Book review: The Book Theif

Not that long ago I met a local guy here in Da Nang that has a really nice collection of books and he is nice enough to let me borrow any of them that I want. I treat these books very carefully and am sure to return them in the same state that I borrow them. I don't want to be one of those people that ruins your shit when you let him use it so I am extra careful.

In the past two years I have read I think more than I ever have at any other point in my life. A lot of this has to do with my age and because normally I am either going to do something productive like read, or I am going to go to the bar. The bar doesn't have many benefits and normally results in me hating the next day. Books on the other hand keep my mind a bit active and if you run into someone else that has read that book then you have something quite interesting that you can talk about. It's a lot more interesting than talking about a meme that you both saw, although I do like that as well.

Well recently he told me with some level of enthusiasm about a book called The Book Thief and he warned me to go into the book without knowing anything about it. He strongly encouraged me to not watch the recently released movie with the same name - which I watched the same day after I finished the book and that movie absolutely sucks and gives the book a bad name. So if you are avoiding reading this book because you suffered through that horrible movie, give the book a chance. I know it sounds high-falootin' to say it, but the book is much better than the movie, as is often the case.

Nadi was kind enough to pose for this picture although she is made quite nervous by something like this sitting next to her. Perhaps she was attacked by books as a child or something. She suffered through it and got a treat afterwards so it's all good.

Now, I am not going to give much away about this book because of the fact that as much as I hate movie spoilers, it is even worse to give book spoilers because so much more time goes into someone having that experience.

So I will mostly just say this and honestly, this is all that really need to be said about it

This is one of the best books I have ever read in my life

The book takes place during World War 2 in Nazi Germany and it follows the life of one family in particular. The main character Liesel Meminger, who we are introduced to right at the start by an unlikely narrator, Death. This is not a spoiler folks because it is literally written on the sleeve of the book and it is made clear in the first paragraph. There is no big reveal as it is made very clear that the narrator of the entire story is Death himself (itself?) and it provides us with a very interesting perspective into the lives (and deaths) of most of the major characters in the story. The narration has a very interesting perspective because Death has the ability to see into the hearts and minds of all the characters. Nothing is hidden from him and our oddly kind narrator actually spoils certain upcoming aspects of the story intentionally. This seemed like an odd approach because there are several critical and shocking moments that take place in the book that I thought "well that sucks, why did they outright tell us that was going to happen?" only to later understand what the idea was and how it is actually more impactful being done that way. You know it is coming because Death told you it was coming. You just don't know when and when it gets close you have almost this feeling of dread because you are thinking "is it going to happen now?"

_{Is it still there? I don't want to look at it!}

The reason why this book is so good is difficult to explain. I suppose it would be helpful if you had some appreciation for World War 2, but I don't think even that is necessary. Some categorize it as a "young adult" book and I can see where they are coming from with that because the writing is quite innocent and very "rated PG." There is nothing terribly graphic although the imagery that is provided by the writing is very tragic and kind of brings you into the minds of the people that must have lived through that very dark period in history. Nazi Germany is one of those topics that I never tire of because it is such a unique point in history and one that I think needs to be told over and over again from different perspectives to hopefully help prevent something like that from every happening again.

Another aspect of this book that I really liked was the way the chapters are set up. In books, even really good books, I am annoyed by chapters that are in my mind, "too long." Atlas Shrugged is a good example of this. Even though I consider that to be an amazing book sometimes I was turned off by the rather extreme lengths of some of the chapters. One of the worst one being when there is a speech given by one of the major characters in that book and homeboy's speech was over 90 pages long and contained 32,000 words. That was absurd and I nearly stopped reading the book because of it.

_{Nadi hanging out calmly in the coffee shop in my building while I read a chapter or two with coffee}

In The Book Thief the chapters "get on with it" quite quickly and some of the chapters almost seem like a condensed version of the actual events. This is made possible by the all-seeing narrator Death and another reason why having an omnipotent narrator is very helpful to keeping things moving in the story. I am not very patient when it comes to books, movies, or even things like video games so these short chapters made this book even more enjoyable to me.

By the time you get to the end of this book I would be willing to bet that you get choked up at some points and maybe actual tears will even flow. Seeing as how it is a book about Nazi Germany it of course is going to be a tragedy but it takes a lot to make me well up in my bed when I am putting the story together in my mind. This book managed to do that.

It was first published in 2006 and won a ton of awards that I believe it truly deserves. The story is a work of fiction of course but based on real events to a certain degree.

It is really unfortunate that they absolutely murdered the story in the film and I was apprehensive about watching it at all when I noticed it rates at less than 50% or 5/10 on major review sites. I would imagine that a lot of these bad scores were given by people like me who are upset about how they managed to absolutely butcher an amazing story on the big screen. I think the fact that they were trying to make an epic war movie with a budget of $19 million probably had something to do with why it was so terrible.

So if you are looking for a book to read I give my heartfelt recommendation for this one. Despite its daunting size I managed to tear though this bad boy in about a week and this was just from reading for about an hour or so each day. I don't recommend a lot of books to people because I feel like most books are rather "meh." This is the opposite of that so if you have a chance to pick it up do so. If you live in North America you probably have access to a library that will have multiple copies of it so you don't even have to pay anything.

Wonderfully entertaining and touching. I was truly disappointed when it was over.