(no subject)

[skygiants]

I've been meaning to read Markus Zusak's The Book Thief since lunamystic mentioned it on her reading list last year, and . . . man. I don't generally cry over books, but I don't think a book has brought me this close to tears (in the good way) since I read Octavian Nothing.

And yes, when I started it, a part of me was thinking "not another Holocaust book, I have read how many of these in my life?" but. But. Yes, in one sense it is a Holocaust book, with many of the staples - a Jew hiding in the basement, fear of the Nazis, 'Heil Hitlers' everywhere - but it also has a number of things that are not staples in the least. It's about words and what they can and can't do. It's about Death (personified, although not at all Pratchettian, which I will admit threw me at first) and death (in general). It's about a girl who sometimes saves books and sometimes destroys them, and her foster mother who teaches her profanity and her foster father who plays the accordion, and a German boy who wants to be Jesse Owens and a Jewish man who boxes with the Fuhrer every night in his head and bonds with the girl over nightmares and fistfights.

I promote this book through multimedia:


I speak His name in a futile attempt to understand. "But it's not your job to understand." That's me who answers. God never says anything. You think you're the only one he never answers? "Your job is to . . ." And then I stop listening, because to put it bluntly, I tire me.

. . .

Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye.
- Death

As you can see, I have been in your library again and I have ruined one of your books. I was just so angry and afraid and I wanted to kill the words.
- Liesel, in a letter




And, last, a video:

(Hilariously, while I was looking for the semi-official video, I also found a vid made using footage from Harry Potter, starring Hermione as the heroine, Ron as her best friend, and Harry as the Jewish fistfighter. OH INTERNET.)

Comments

[lunamystic]

I love The Book Thief so hard. One of these days I need to pick up I Am the Messenger.


I also found a vid made using footage from Harry Potter, starring Hermione as the heroine, Ron as her best friend, and Harry as the Jewish fistfighter.

*staaaaares* Oh my.

[skygiants]

Oh, me too! After reading this book everything else by Markus Zusak pretty much just leapt onto my list.

I KNOW. What's hilarious is how it's indistinguishable from any other Ron/Hermione/Harry love triangle vid!

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

This book has been on my list for a while, but I couldn't get into it the two times I tried to pick it up. I think I need to give myself an afternoon to sit down and really get into it, instead of trying to start it on the train the way I usually do.

Also, unrelatedly, have you read The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry? I just finished it this morning and I think you might like it.

[skygiants]

It took me a while to get into it too, actually - I think because I kept getting thrown by Death being not a Death I was familiar with. (. . . in fiction. You know.) I was going really slowly with the book until I was about a third of the way through, and then I finished the rest in about two train rides and was wishing it was longer.

I have not, tell me more! What's it about?

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

It's a bit hard to describe, but it's about a detective agency in an imaginary city where a clerk is promoted to detective and all he wants is his clerk job back, so he has to find the detective who has gone missing by filling in the holes in all of his old cases. It has awesome writing. I don't know if I'd really describe it as a mystery because the mystery elements weren't hard to solve...sort of a literary, surreal mystery, I guess.

Anyway, I just found this review (http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2009/03/the_manual_of_d.shtml), which maybe will make more sense than mine.

[skygiants]

Oh cool! This will totally be going on my list.