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Mar. 19th, 2009 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI've been meaning to read Markus Zusak's The Book Thief since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.)
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.)
