Bookahooligans: Books to Burn/Book Talks: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

**To view spoilers, drag your mouse over the empty space between"<SPOILER>...<SPOILER>"

BOOK TALK HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANoFqxz0oHY

Where do I begin . . .
I have just finished The Book Thief.
To sum up my reading experience, I waited 550 pages for a plot and didn't get one.

Let me just purge my thoughts onto this blank page. Maybe you can sort them out for me.

The Book Thief is about a girl named Liesel who stole about three books and learned to read.

Just . . . I really am happy for you if you liked this book, and maybe I missed something, but I did not enjoy this book.

Okay. It's easier for me to sort my thoughts with bullets and it's more fun for a lot of people on the internet to read things that way.

The writing style was beautiful. It was very difficult to get used to, but once you get used to it, it's really poetic and dramatic. However, some of the word choices were very strange (a breakfast colored sun) while others worked very well. The metaphors and other figures of speech were definitely very different than anything I'd ever read before. I just flipped open the book to a random page and found very interesting sentences.

-Papa apologized. "It's quite pathetic. I realize that." "Better than nothing," Max assured him. "Better than I deserve--thank you." p 208
-There was a constant urge to speak both expressions, spurred on by the affliction of guilt. p 208
-It was much the same as the way he left his family in Stuttgart, under a veil of fabricated loyalty. p 208
-To live. Living was living. The prices was guilt and shame. p 208
-She denied his existences. His rustling hair, his cold, slippery fingers. His tortured presence. p 209
-Drizzle came down in spades. p 209
-Dead leaves were slumped on the road. p 209

I mean, Markus Zusak should become a poet.

The narrator. This book was narrated by Death. He freaking annoyed me. I was okay with him until p 241. You know what happened on p 241? <I suppose it's a SPOILER> HE FREAKING TELLS YOU THAT RUDY DIES. The big finale where Rudy dies is the only thing that would have given the book some sort of plot. But I was spoiled BY THE FREAKING AUTHOR. Maybe the author was just like "Oh, goodness. My ending is so great that I just can't keep it to myself." NO. JUST DON'T. <SPOILER> In the beginning, when the narrator kept on butting in, it irked me a little, but I got used to it. Then, with all of the dictionary definitions and the spoilers, I was just like . . .
The plot. There was none. I don't think that someone learning how to read while hiding a Jew in their basement is much of a plot. There is only one moment in this book when I was thinking "Yeah! This is awesome!" That was when Liesel punched the kid who was making fun of her in the face. Then, you know what happened for the rest of the book? Nothing.
The ending. Don't worry, if I tell you, it won't matter because DEATH FREAKING SPELLED IT OUT ON PAGE 24FREAKING1. But, it wasn't much of an ending. Yeah, it was realistic I suppose, but even with Death pretty much telling us what happened, it just came out of nowhere. <SPOILER> A bomb just comes out of nowhere and kills everyone but Liesel. Fantastic. <SPOILER>
The characters. I liked Rudy. He was interesting. The whole Jesse Owens thing gave him a personality, and he was interesting. I liked his character. But the dreaded page 241 . . . ugh. Also, I imagine him like a normal, blonde haired dude, even though Death insisted that he looked like an anime character with lemon hair.

Liesel felt a little flat-ish, but I can appreciate that most of the people around her have died and she doesn't act like a complete Saumensch.
I liked Max. He was really nice and cool and I loved his drawing and I loved how he fought Hitler in his . . . dreams. But his arrival didn't really give the book a plot. On the back of the book, it says that "When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up and closed down." But it was just like "Yay! We're hiding a Jew in our basement! Let's feed him soup for 300 more pages!"
I liked Hans. I liked Rosa, much more than I thought I would, minus her constant swearing. I liked a lot of the characters, minus Hitler, but it didn't give the book a plot or anything.

I liked all of Max's drawings. Pages 223-236 and pages 279 and 280 and pages 445-450 were by far my favorite pages, and they are the reason that I would rate this book 3 out of 5 stars. Those pages added to the story, especially page 280, which despite looking like it was drawn by a not-particularly-talented sixth grader, felt really powerful and stirred up more emotions inside of me than the sad ending of this tragic book did.
The reviews of the book. I can completely see why people love this book. I totally understand. But The New York Times called this book "BRILLIANT and hugely ambitious . . . . It's the kind of book that can be LIFE-CHANGING." But you know . . . I don't think it is. This quote was really one of the reasons I was excited to read this book, but I felt nothing. The ending didn't make me cry, I didn't cry at all during this book. It didn't change my life. I just kept looking at the bottom of the page to see how close I was to being done with this book.

All in all, I didn't hate this book and I'm not going to burn it because it was expensive. But I didn't enjoy this book. It was just kind of . . .

Yay! I'm going to read this book!