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:

( Quotes! )

( An image! )

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.)