I'm always finding people at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both

As I promised in my last post, I've finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  It was hard to get through the end.  Every page has another heart wrenching situation for the characters deal with but it never feels melodramatic, it never feels forced.  I was worried the book would go down that road.  I suppose anytime I see "New York Times #1 Bestseller" plastered on the front of a book I get a little nervous the book will be manipulative of the characters and ultimately of the reader.  It's an unfair preconception on my part, I know, and at some point perhaps I'll work on it.  I did take a class in college called The Modern Bestseller and it mostly confirmed those beliefs.  Luckily for me I heard enough reviews from other bloggers that I was willing to give the book a try.  That and I didn't know about it's NYT Bestseller status until I already decided to buy it.

I mentioned the book is especially heart wrenching at the end and of course this isn't too surprising for a story about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.  The blows little Liesel has to take, one right after the other, are devastating for her and it was difficult for me to read this book in public.  The reader is warned about the horrors that are coming before they actually take place because the narrator Death keeps telling you what's going to happen, before he gets back to telling the story.  Rather than ruining the ending this just serves to build the tension.  I ended up on the edge of my seat wondering if this was the moment Death was referring to earlier.  I don't know that I necessarily liked this technique because I spent so much time waiting for the other shoe to drop that I'm sure I missed important points.

The next parts will contain some spoilers so heads up.

There were 2 deaths Death said on multiple occasions were coming and while I may have missed other subtle points waiting for it to happen, this did not make the deaths any less powerful.  When Liesel sees the LSE carrying Rudy's body I was devastated.  I had to take many breaks while reading the scene of her kissing Rudy while the LSE tried to remove the bodies and get Liesel to safety.  The whole block was destroyed and there is so much pain to take in but the fact that Liesel essentially breaks down at this moment is hard to read.

The second part I guess wasn't the direct death that was so painful but instead it was the imminent pain and suffering that was about to happen.  Liesel and the others are watching Nazi soldiers lead a group of Jews through the town on the way to a death camp and Liesel is searching for Max, the Jew her family had sheltered.  When she finds him she runs into the crowd and stands with him.  It's not the violence of the scene but that there is this pocket of love within so much hatred that is so touching.  both Liesel and Max knew that the consequences would be harsh for this behavior and yet it doesn't matter.

Thank you to the bloggers that recommended this book in your own reviews.  I won't be adding this my pile of books that I read over and over again but I was pleasantly surprised to so enjoy the book.

Title quote from page 491

Lack-of-reading excuse

I feel like I've been slacking on my next Book Thief post but that's because I've been totally slacking on my reading.  Here's the deal: as I've mentioned 100 times, I recently moved.  I'm still in Boston but I'm in a new neighborhood which is closer to my work.  Hooray because that means instead of having to go 14 stops on the subway, I now go 5.  And there's a transfer in the middle which makes the whole ordeal seem less painful.  So while it's great that my commute makes me want to physically harm less people on a regular basis, it also leaves me much less time for reading. 

I'm still loving The Book Thief but I don't have my normal reading schedule and I've yet to get into a new reading schedule.  I have a couple trips coming up so I'll have lots of free time to read and hopefully I'll not only have my other Book Thief post completed but I'll also have a new book started.

West Coast Rap and Western Civilization Epic

At times I find myself making connections that seemingly make no sense.  I'll hear something or see something and it will remind me of something that seems to exist in an entirely different realm.  I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  It's mostly a confusing thing during conversation when I bring up what appears to be a non sequitur but I swear there was a connection in my head.

Not long ago I was listening to some of the number 1 hits from 1995, thanks to the Children of the 90s blog.  Among the choice selections here is "California Love" by Dr. Dre and Tupac.  Now I am not a fan of rap, however Tupac holds a special place in my heart.  Many an afternoon in high school was spent sitting in my friend's basement playing Golden Eye and listening to the All Eyez On Me album. (Ah, the suburbs.)  I won't say I'm a fan of Tupac; it's more of a Stockholm Syndrome but with music because I had to listen to it so often. 

Anyway, I'm listening to "California Love" and I get to the end of the song where they are just naming different cities in California ("Inglewood always up to no good"). I'm not from California so it did nothing for me personally, but I imagine people getting excited when they hear their hometown.  This is where that odd connection comes in: right after I thought about how I didn't really care about the cities listed but someone must I thought of The Iliad.  There's a long scene in The Iliad where Homer just names all of these different Greek city-states.  (I'm not going to include examples because 1) I'm lazy and 2) I don't have the book in front of me and an internet search is taking more than 4 seconds to get me what I want so I quit.  Tenacity is clearly not a trait of mine.)  When I last read The Iliad in college I remember the professor explaining this long, boring and essentially narratively-pointless part of the story as being a matter of pride for people listening to the tale.  Just as those imaginary club goers in my head get excited when they hear their town called out in "California Love" so did those ancient Greeks get rowdy when their hometown is mentioned.  (I hope you're now picturing ancient Greeks in a modern club because I am.)  

I suppose even without a direct or even conscious connection, The Iliad is still managing to influence modern works.  Or else I just see connections where none exist.  But if you'd like to play 6 degrees of The Iliad with something else as random as west coast rap, please include it in the comments!

Book Blog Hop IX

I was debating skipping this week's hop, hosted by Crazy-for-Books, but then I realized that hurricane is supposed to hit the East coast all weekend and I'll probably be trapped inside so what better to do with my time than hop around and find some new book blogs.  So there you go, a hurricane induced hop.

This week's question is "Do you judge a book by its cover?"
Yes, I definitely do.  If I'm not already familiar with the author or the book a cover will either make me walk on by or pick it up.  I have not (yet) bought a book based entirely on the cover but a good cover will be a way for the book to get a foot in the door.  Or a page in the door I suppose. 

What do you think?  Do you judge books by their covers?  Do covers matter?

First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things.

This is the second book I've read because of reviews from fellow book bloggers (the first was Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You) so thanks to everyone who read and suggested The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  I underestimated how long it would take me to read Tropper's book and all of my other books were packed for the move so I was at a bit of a loss as to what to read next.  I started reading Lamb again but Boyfriend is currently in the middle of it so he was anxious to get me another book and get Lamb back.  Even though he's been reading it for about 10 years (or like 5 months but it feels like 10 years).

So we were out shopping and I decided I'd buy a new book so he could go back to not reading Lamb.  I saw both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Book Thief sitting on a shelf.  Now, I'm supposed to be reading TGwtDT for my book club (apparently I'm the only one to have read What's My Name, Fool? and everyone picked another book before our meeting) but I wasn't really in the mood for it.  I've read mixed things about Dragon Tattoo but excellent things about The Book Thief so I'll just have to rush to get the book club book finished in time at some other date.

First of all, I didn't realize The Book Thief is considered a children's book.  I'm halfway through the book and it wasn't until this morning when I glanced at all the awards listed on the back of the book and saw "Winner of the Book Sense Book of the Year Award for Children's Literature".  What now?  This book is?  Really?  I know it deals with children and I was thinking that the sentences are very simple but it doesn't feel like it's talking down to the audience. I thought it was a stylistic choice that works for the narrator.  Maybe it's because the subject is the Holocaust that I didn't think of it as a children's book.  Maybe I'm not familiar enough with children's lit to know it unless it's very obviously for children.  Now that I've typed that I don't even know if I could describe the rules for "very obviously for children".  Roald Dahl comes to mind.  As does Louis Sachar.  OK I won't keep naming children's authors but what I am going to say is this book doesn't feel like those.  It feels more mature than a children's work.

Death (with a capital D for those familiar with Moore's work A Dirty Job) is the narrator.  It feels a bit like a gimmick, that Zusak could have just made an outside person the narrator and not have it be Death.  But the fact that Death is the narrator didn't distract me from the book and it gives the opportunity to have an omnipotent unbiased narrator.  The story can explore so many more other characters that a single human narrator wouldn't be able to look at.

As I mentioned, I'm only about halfway through the book so I hope to have additional concluding thoughts but so far the book is very touching and very moving and I'm really enjoying it. 

Title quote from page 3.

Blog Tag!

I was supposed to start reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for book club (because apparently I'm the only person that read What's My Name, Fool?) but instead of buying TGwtDT I picked up  The Book Thief instead, entirely based on reviews from people in the book blog world.  So thank you all that posted about it! 

While I work on reading this new book, Ms. C over at Coffee Tale Reviews has pulled me into a game of blog tag and I kind of have the mentality of a small child so I love games!  So you're supposed to answer the questions below and then tag some of your favorite bloggers.  And as Ms. C said, if you don't want to play, no worries.  Just know that I'm a big fan of your blog.

1. Milk or dark chocolate? Dark.  I really don't like milk chocolate unless there's a fair amount of other flavors to temper it.  I'm not a fan of milk in general so I guess this makes sense.
2. What's your favorite color? Currently green in all sorts of shades, especially bright ones.  I used to have a lime green phone that I may have selected mostly based on the color.  I'm easily impressed like that.
3. Do you have any creative hobbies? It's sad how little creative work I do now.  I used to do a lot of photography and drawing but I haven't done either in awhile.  I did just recently buy a DSLR camera in the hopes of getting back into photography.  I figure if I don't have darkroom access (because I'm too lazy to find some) I can still play with some nice digital photos.  And I suppose this blog can count as a creative hobby since I started it in an attempt to get back into writing.
4. What was your favorite subject in school? English, but I suppose that isn't a surprise considering a) I got my degree in English and b) I write this book blog thing.  I also enjoyed the photography classes I've taken but I gave math a lot of leeway to do it's own thing.  
5. What is your favorite season?  Why? I used to always consider winter my favorite season because I loved how it looked and I was an avid snowboarder.  I now haven't been snowboarding in roughly the last 6 years and I have to walk a portion of my way to work which means I kind of hate winter now.  That's probably too strong of a word, but I'm sure once winter comes to Boston again I won't think so.  For now it's fall.  I like when it's not too hot (I'm too pale for the sun) but it's not freezing either.  And fall has Halloween and Thanksgiving and since I'm a big fan of food, these are 2 of my favorite holidays.
6. Who inspires you to sing like crazy when nobody is around? Pretty much any song I know at least a portion of the lyrics to inspires me to sing like crazy and people can be around.  I have no problem belting out songs with close friends or Boyfriend nearby, looking at me like I'm nuts.  We've had the Broadway version of American Idiot in the car that I love singing along to and we recently added an 80s CD (new wave & hair bands) so I've been going to town on that one too.  What's more fun than belting out "You Give Love a Bad Name?" 
7. What's your favorite dessert?  Can you make it? I don't really have one favorite, go-to dessert.  I really like panna cotta and bread pudding, neither of which I've ever tried to make so who knows how it would go.  This question is making me think about desserts I can make and I just realized I have a recipe for key-lime raspberry bars with a coconut shortbread crust that I want to make again.  So I didn't answer the question but I did think of something to do this weekend.  Assuming I can find where I put that recipe.
8. How did you learn to cook? Cook by watching my dad and grandma, bake by watching my mom and other grandma. A couple of my friends are amazing cooks as well but I don't know if I really learn from them so much as sit in wonder while they buzz around the kitchen.  I used to look through my friend's books when he was in cooking school and I thought they were very interesting if way over my head.  I'll let him do all the heavy culinary lifting

And now a few bloggers I love reading that may enjoy a game of tag

The Book Stop
The Far Too Important Blog
Literary Musing
Lit Addicted Brit
The Space Bard