the book thief

September 8, 2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Recent(ish) YA Books My Teenage Self Would Have Loved

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! So, a little while back I made a list of young adult books, published while I was a young adult, I wish I would have read. This list is similar, but with a twist: here are ten YA books I wish had been published when I was a teenager (so, after 2004), because I would have been very into them!

The Hate U Give: I thought this book was a solid read as an adult, but it’s really more targeted towards teenagers, and I think teenage me would have been extremely into it!

The Hunger Games: This book and its sequels (haven’t read the new prequel yet) are exactly the type of young adult I would have loved, complete with stereotypical love triangle.

Twilight: I read all these books when I was in college, so not too far removed from my teenage years, and I ate them up (I still find them the perfect kind of brain dessert).

Uglies: I very much liked the first one of these that I read off my little sister’s bookshelves, but the second one kind of lost me because I was really out of the “teenage dystopia” headspace by that point.

The Serpent King: I absolutely loved this book even as an adult, but think it would have been even more appealing to me as a small-town nerd in high school.

Shatter Me: Another one I quite liked even as a grown-up, but would have been even more appealing to teen me.

Children of Blood and Bone: This did not do much for me as someone who has come to really enjoy a character-heavy drama instead a plot-driven adventure, but I think I would have appreciated the thrill of it more when I was younger.

Divergent: I read the first two books in this series several years ago, and I think teenage me would have been more tolerant of all the tropes on display there.

The Book Thief: I thought this was moving, enjoyable book when I read it a few years ago and I would have been obsessed with it if I’d first encountered it as a teen.

Delirium: I found this inoffensively fluffy as an adult but I’m pretty sure I would have found it very swoony once upon a time.

June 13, 2019

Book 185: The Book Thief

“Although something inside her told her that this was a crime—after all, her three books were the most precious items she owned—she was compelled to see the thing lit. She couldn’t help it. I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.”

Dates read: October 25-30, 2017

Rating: 8/10

Over the past several months (writing from the end of 2017), there’s been no small amount of debate over what it means to be complicit. Ivanka Trump asserted that she’s not complicit in her father’s presidency, which she wouldn’t necessarily be as a daughter, but she pretty clearly is as a senior advisor in his administration. There’s a growing awareness that to be privileged in a system that’s beneficial to you, whether or not you are an active architect or proponent of it, without taking action for marginalized people also flirts with the line of complicity. No one likes to feel complicit, so we try to find ways to weasel out of it, to find people more actively involved with whatever it is, point the finger at them.

One of the biggest open questions of complicity in the last century is that of the German population under the Third Reich. I suspect, like most things, it fell in some sort of bell curve…some citizens were opposed, some were supporters, and most fell somewhere in between, trying to survive by keeping their heads down. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief takes us to a small village in Germany during World War II and lets us see that spectrum play out. A young girl named Liesel and her brother are brought by their mother to foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, because their mother can no longer afford to keep them with her. On the way, though, her brother dies, and this is what brings Liesel to the attention of Death.

Death is our narrator, and when the illiterate Liesel snatches a book off the ground as her brother is buried, he (it?) dubs her “the book thief”. Liesel doesn’t actually steal very many books during the course of the story, but it fits well enough. For a while, as Liesel grows to know and love her rough-edged, foul-mouthed foster mother and gentle, patient foster father who teaches her to read, and makes friends with her neighbor Rudy, their little town is isolated from larger events. But the real world can’t be avoided forever, and World War II sweeps over the Hubermann household, bringing a Jewish man into their basement to hide and constant danger lurking everywhere.

The villagers’ attitudes toward Nazism range from passionate true believers to the Hubermanns, who resist joining the Party and hide a Jew for months. Many of their neighbors go along as far as they need to to keep out of trouble. I don’t think this is a perspective we see very often, looking at the ordinary people who exist in these regimes, and so I found it interesting to read. Zusak’s characterizations of everyone who populates the village are a highlight…Liesel herself is probably the least well-developed character, but Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and several of Liesel’s other classmates make vivid impressions and linger in the memory even after the book is closed.

But even though this book tends to get rapturous praise, there were some places where it fell flat, too. I think the Death-as-narrator trick worked less well than it could have…it just struck me as more gimmicky than meaningful and never really developed. I think the constant interjections into the text as “explainers” by Death were overused, and I think Zusak’s writing is sometimes overly focused on going for “wow” instead of letting itself flow. As a whole, though, these are minor quibbles. The book is very good, with vivid and developed characters living in a well-drawn community, and the ending has a big (and earned!) emotional impact. It’s well-worth reading and I’d recommend it widely, to everyone.

One year ago, I was reading: Love Medicine

Two years ago, I was reading: The Man Without A Face

Three years ago, I was reading: Zodiac

March 27, 2018

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Take Place In Other Countries

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! While I read mostly books set in the country in which I was born and live (which I imagine many of us do), my reading goes all over the world! And that’s something I love about reading, how I can travel anywhere I want from my chair/bed/reading locale of the moment. Here are ten mostly recent-ish reads that take place outside of the US that I really enjoyed!

The Bear and the Nightingale (Russia): I’ve written about this Slavic folklored-based young adult book before to tell you how much I loved it but I LOVED it! The first two books in this series are both great, honestly, and I can’t wait for the third to come this summer!

Stay With Me (Nigeria): You think you know where this book might be headed when a couple’s interfering, traditional in-laws get the husband a second wife because his first one hasn’t gotten pregnant yet…but you have no idea. And the plot continues to twist on and on in ways that are completely unexpected.

Rebecca (England): This Gothic suspense novel has lots of repression, largely takes place on a countryside estate, and features a head housekeeper as the main antagonist, so it’s very English indeed.

The Blind Assassin (Canada): Margaret Atwood is Canadian after all, so it’s only reasonable that she sets this incredible, rich story in her homeland.

The Book Thief (Germany): Bring all the tissues for this World War 2 story about a young orphaned girl who loves to read.

Big Little Lies (Australia): I still haven’t managed to sit down and watch the TV show (which was set in California), but the book was super entertaining and it just goes to show that rich lady competitive mommy-ing is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

The Queen of the Night (France): There’s a little bit at the beginning that’s in America, and another bit in Germany, but this is mostly in Napoleonic France and it has the best kind of truly insane plot and I love it so much.

The God of Small Things (India): This is one of my two “cheats”, because I first read this book quite some time ago, but it’s so good and basically anything I know about Kerala at all comes from this book.

In The Woods (Ireland): I don’t read a lot of mystery, because I find it gets formulaic and often is plot-over-character when I prefer the other way around. But this book has inspired me to collect the rest of the Dublin Murder Squad series because it was so well-told and I want to read mooooore.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Sweden): My second cheat, because I read these books during the summer of my first year in law school, but I did really love this trilogy, the first book especially. I’ve got no interest in the continuing series with a new author, though.

October 30, 2017

A Month In The Life: October 2017

What a month! October is always my favorite month of the year: birthday, usually the best weather, college football is in full swing, holidays are right around the corner. This October was especially lovely…not only did I celebrate my birthday (and my husband’s), I had my annual girl’s trip with my best friends and I got to go the wedding of my friend who was the officiant at my wedding!

In Books…

Bonfire of the Vanities: This was my second try at Tom Wolfe, and although by the end I could appreciate what he was trying to do with it, I just HATE his writing style. This was a chore to get through.
The Royals: I’ve always been into the British royal family, and after I binged (and loved!) The Crown, this was a book I saw on a list of “if you liked the show, here are some books to read”. It’s kind of like a super-sized US Weekly all about the Windsors…sometimes questionably sourced gossip, but an interesting look behind the curtain at a family which has to be conscious of itself as an institution as well as a group of people bound together by blood and/or love.
The Blind Assassin: Somehow, this was only my second Margaret Atwood (after The Handmaid’s Tale), and reading it reminded me what an incredible writer she is. This book is intricately crafted and heartwrenching and so so good.
Lincoln in the Bardo: This was our book club selection from the month, and I always read them even when (as was the case this month) I’m not able to go to the actual meeting. This book uses the purgatory-esque Tibetan concept of the bardo, where souls remain between life and death, to tell the story of how the death of his 11 year-old son, Willie, effected President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. It’s written as kind of a play, with nonfiction historical sources framing it…it’s very odd, but it’s good.
Player Piano: The only other Vonnegut I’ve read is Slaughterhouse, which I liked, so I picked up his first novel. About what happens to the world when machines have rendered most people economically superfluous, it’s surprisingly relevant to our current state of affairs. It struggles a bit in execution, but it raises interesting ideas.
White Fur: This star-crossed lovers story had some amazing writing, but ultimately fell pretty flat for me. I didn’t ever really feel like I had a good understanding of the main characters and their motivations, and I didn’t really get some of the choices the author made (in particular, about setting).
The Book Thief: This book came in with high expectations, since it is so widely beloved. I found it very good (and the ending an absolute tearjerker), but I wasn’t quite as blown away as I expected to be. Don’t get me wrong, it was a powerful read, but it never got to greatness for me.

In Life…

I turned 32: There was an update post and giveaway and everything! I’ve come to be on Team Low-Key Birthday over the years, so we went out to dinner at my favorite restaurant two days beforehand and just lived my normal life, work and all, on the day of.
BFF2K17: It was Britney, bitch! My best friends and I decided we reallllly wanted to see Britney’s show before she left Las Vegas, so we took off four days in the middle of the week to see the Wednesday show and take advantage of lower hotel rates. We shopped, we drank, we hung out…it was a lovely time and I already miss them!
My friend Rachel got married: Rachel and I worked together for about a year before she left the company, but we stayed friends and she actually performed our wedding last year! I am so jealous, because she got married at Reno’s Discovery Museum and there’s a Sue replica there so she got to live my t-rex wedding dreams.
Drew turned 32: My husband and I were born just two weeks apart, so we celebrated his birthday this month, too!

One Thing:

As should be pretty obvious from my posting of a monthly photo of Lord Stanley, I am a pug owner. I am also just flat-out obsessed with pugs. If you, too, find pugs to be delightful, you should check out Inkpug, whose shop I have patronized for quite some time because I love their work. As usual, this is not a referral link, I am just pointing you there because I genuinely love their products.

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

September 19, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: My Fall TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic, our fall to-be-read list, is probably supposed to be focusing on fall new releases. But since I don’t read a ton of new releases, I thought I’d show you the next ten books I’m reading! There will be a book club pick or two inserted in this lineup, but I don’t know what those will be yet so here’s what I’m planning to read.

Stay With Me: An ARC I meant to get to earlier but didn’t, I’ve heard kind of mixed reviews of this story of an African couple debating polygamy in order to have a family. I’m curious, though, and some people seem to have really liked it, so I’m going to go for it.

Bonfire of the Vanities: Apparently this is very 80s-tastic…I’ve never seen the movie but it was a legendary flop, so I’m really curious about the source material.

The Royals: I know, I know, this book is filled with gossip and half-truths and is nearly a decade old now, to boot. But I’ve always been interested in the British royal family and I want to read it so I’m going to.

The Blind Assassin: I recently re-read The Handmaid’s Tale and was struck not only with the relevancy of the tale, but the quality of the writing. I want to read more of Atwood’s work, and also it won the Booker Prize, which is an awards list I tend to enjoy.

Player Piano: The only Vonnegut I’ve read is Slaughterhouse-Five, which I really did like, so I decided to read more of his work.

White Fur: I’m behind on getting to this ARC too, but I’ve heard some good stuff about it from bloggers I trust so I’m looking forward to finally reading it!

The Book Thief: A bunch of people I know love this book, but my middle school English teacher mother-in-law doesn’t care for it…I’m curious who I end up agreeing with!

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter: This book is one of those that tends to show up on lots of different “best of” lists, so I snagged it on sale for the Kindle.

The Underground Railroad: This book was a major hit last year and I’ve been meaning to read it for months, so it’s time to finally make that happen.

A Vast Conspiracy: I love Jeffrey Toobin, so I was super stoked when I found a second-hand copy of his book on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal so I could read it.

On the Blog

Join the Listt