BOOK REPORT: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Title:                                     The Book Thief

Author:                                  Markus Zusak

Original Copyright Date:    2007

My Rating:    5 out of 5 stars  ( simply amazing )


Backcover Description

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath.

Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

      By her brother's graveside, Liesel Meminger's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow.  It is The Grave Digger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.
      But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up and closed down.

My Thoughts

Prologue

featuring

an introduction and an explanation of format 

Why do I find it harder to write book reports for the books I love versus others?  This particular book report has been especially difficult given how much I loved The Book Thief and how much this book has impacted me.  I finished it over a week ago now and I've thought about this book everyday since.  I am still obsessed with it and I'm telling everyone I know who reads on a semi-regular basis to read it.   I've found it hard to articulate exactly what I want to say in a somewhat brief book report without overwhelming the reader or giving away too much of the plot line.

The format of this book report is a bit different as well.  I've broken it up into four main parts similar to the way Markus Zusak breaks up the book where he gives hints as to what is to come with a "featuring" line.  I just thought this was clever and decided to mimic it for this report.

Part One

The Book Report

featuring 

A rave review and a reader jealous of the author

When I finished this book, I told Maggie that even if I don't finish the twenty-five books I set out to read last fall, this project was worth the time and energy because it led me to this book. This is the best book I've read this year. Hands down.

Even though it is technically classified as Young Adult or Children's Fiction, this is not "light" reading; it is a glimpse of the ugliness of War seen through the eyes of a 10 year old orphan girl.

 And it is beautifully done.

Actually, that is one of the major themes of the book.  That humans, can have moments of beauty, tenderness, and joy, even when their world is collapsing, sometimes literally, around them. 

How does Markus Zusak achieve this?  Besides being simply a great, well written story,  he uses two fairly standard literary constructs in interesting ways.

First is his use of Death as the narrator.  I can hear you mumbling as you read this, "How can Death make something as tragic the holocaust readable? That would seem to make it MORE depressing".  Well, Death in this book isn't the tall, stoic, black-robed, scythe-wielding figure we all know and love from the movies.  He cares for the stories of the people he helps cross from the land of the living to where ever they go.  He is an emotional player in all of the events which occur around characters, even before Germany invades Poland.   Death is not an omnipotent third person narrator either. This is Liesel's story, with Death's poignant commentary added in.

Second is Zusak's use of blatant foreshadowing.  Death tells us up front when something significant will happen, including a few details about the event, then backs up a bit and continues telling the story.  Sometimes the forshadowed event will happen within the near future, sometimes within a few months, and sometimes, the event is years away. These events are not always tragic, or sad, or life-changing, but they are important. But when they are heartbreaking, knowing about it before hand doesn't lessen or trivialize the tragedy of the moment, it just takes away a *bit* of the surprise,... sometimes... Blending this interesting use of foreshadowing somehow adds weight to small happy moments in Liesel's life, allowing you to enjoy them more completely with her.

On a side note, after I finished The Book Thief, I did a bit of research to see what else Markus Zusak has written.  I found out that he is now 36 years old as of this writing.  I am 35.  He's written 8 or 9 books in his young career. Needless to say, I am jealous of his creative success...

and this leads me to: 

Part Two

The Inspiration

featuring

A potential early "New Years Resolution"

Many of you know that I've played around with the idea of trying to writing a short story ever since I posted a link about National Novel Writing Month back in November.  The goal of NNWM is to get people to write down 50,000 words (~175 pages) of a story; it doesn't have to be perfect or even good, the organizers just want to inspire people to put pen to paper and get started. Neil Gaiman's notes about The Graveyard Book inspired me further when he said he's had the idea for the book ever since his son was two years old and wandering around a graveyard behind an old church.

Markus Zusak builds into The Book Thief simply written and illustrated  stories created by the characters themselves and shown completely within the narrative Death is giving us; a short story within a book if you will.  These stories, these characters actually, are the metaphorical straw that broke the novelist camel's back and I am now determined to actually write something of my own...

I don't have any subject, characters, or special theme in mind as of yet; I just know I want to write something. I also don't have any expectations that what I write will be any good. I am now constantly looking out for inspiration in everything I  do.   I figure I would start with simple story at first, which I can then, over time, expand into a legitimate short story that I wouldn't mind if some else actually reads. I think I will make this my next "New Years Resolution".  I haven't worked out the logistics of it or anything, so stay tuned.

The Ending

featuring

wrapping up the book report

I don't know why I seem to have a connection to books about war.  I'm not talking about non-fiction accounts of the political causes thereof or military strategies employed during such-and-such battle, but the personal and social ramifications of one of the most devastating wars ever.   Night, by Elie Wiesel, and One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn still impact me even though I read them waaaaay back in high school.  And I know, The Book Thief will live long in my memory as well.

BOOK REPORT: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Title:              Good Omens: 

                       The Nice and Accurate Prophecies 

                       of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Author:        Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Copyright Date:       2000  (my edition 2006)

My Rating:  5 out of 5 stars  ( Excellent and Funny )

Backcover Description

The world will end on Saturday. Next Saturday. Just before dinner, according toThe Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies written in 1655. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing and everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

My Thoughts

"You can't be certain that what's happening right now isn't exactly right, from an ineffable point of view"

When I mentioned my reading project to my gaming group, the consensus was that I needed to read Good Omens if I hadn't already.  Now, I've read 4 or 5 Pratchett books previously, and anyone who has read any of his books knows how funny and clever he is. His writing is simply a delight to read. It keeps you smiling, sometimes laughing out loud, and will make you think at times as well. 

For those not familiar with Neil Gaimon, he got his start as a graphic novelist, with The Sandman Series  being the most famous, and then expanded into other writing forms.  He wrote the books Stardust and Coraline from which successful movies were made and has a host of other Fiction and Young Adult Fiction in his portfolio. 

You can tell that Terry Pratchett had  much to do with the prose and style of the book.  That same wit is there, but Neil Gaiman brought a darker subject (how do you get darker than the soon to arrive Armageddon) that adds depth to the writing.  

This book was EXTREMELY well done. The story and characters of Good Omens are great.  As the back-cover description outlines, the Armageddon is on its way and the two main characters, an Angel named Aziraphale and a demon named Crowley, who are actually good friends, are reluctant players in the ineffable divine plan.  The four horsemen ride motorcycles with plague being replaced with pollution since the advent of vaccines. There are witches and witch-hunters and the Anti-Christ who was misplaced at birth and is being raised in the suburbs.  

"You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse driven consumerism, don't you?" 

I don't want to go too much more into the plot, but I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting a light-hearted, funny read that is ineffably great. 

BOOK REPORT: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Title:                    Huckleberry Finn

Author:                Mark Twain (Samual Clemens)

Original Copyright Date:         1885

Would Recommend to a friend?: Yes

Back Cover Description: 

Floating down the Mississippi on their raft, Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, find life filled with excitement and the spirit of adventure. Join Huck and Jim and their old friend Tom Sawyer as they come up against low-down thieves and murderers, whilst being chased by Huck's evil, drunken father who is after Huck's treasure. It is a trip that you will never tire of.

My Thoughts:

I was amazed at the complexity of Huckleberry Finn; it went well beyond my expectations. I was expecting an adventure story following a boy riding down the Mississippi River, getting into all sorts of scrapes and near-misses caused by Huck's "boys will be boys" attitude;  I was expecting Treasure Island or King Soloman's Mines. What I got was literature in every sense of the word.  Slavery, Race, Religion, are just some of the themes that even a non-english major can pick out.

I was shell-shocked by the bluntness of language used by Mark Twain when I read some of the passages. For example, the following occurs when Jim (the runaway slave) and Huck have been on the river for a few days is as simple of an explanation of how Huck saw slavery that is, to me, completely unfathomable today:

"Jim Talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an Ab'litionist to go and steal them.

    It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, 'give a nigger an inch and he'll take and ell.' Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children -- children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm."

The passage also demonstrates one of the themes that struck me the most. that despite being an orphan most of his life, an outsider who doesn't want to fit into Miss Watson's normal life with schoolin' and churchin', with a drunk abusive father showing up to take advantage of  Huck's fortune outlined in Tom Sayer, he still thinks about slavery as just the way things were, and asks himself why he is helping Jim. Huck wrestles with what is deemed to be normal and right throughout the book. It doesn't take Huck long to realize that the right thing to do is to help Jim, even though his reasoning isn't quite as strong as, "Slavery is bad and I should do what I can to stop it."

"... and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show -- when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on, --s'pose you'd a done right and give Jim up; would you feel better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad --I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't  no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?"

and further, as Huck and Jim travel on down the river a ways, we see his internal conflict grow from a selfish motivation to keep moving down the river with Jim to a religious one as things get a bit more difficult.
The following quote has Huck praying to "quit being the kind of boy he was, and be better".  Better in terms of what was again, deemed to be normal and right...

"So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-- and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-- I found that out."

He thinks that by not turning in Jim, people would consider it a sin; that to not live "right", he was committing a sin. But the bigger sin to Huck is not being honest and true to himself.

A few years from now, I would like to read Huckleberry Finn again to try and get more from it.  I have no doubt that this book will offer me something more.