Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This book received RAVE reviews on both Barnes and Noble and Amazon as well as in my Bookmarks Magazine. It falls into juvenile literature but adults young and old seemed to like it as well. This was our book club pick for October. And only one person finished it. I got to about page 75, others got to page 100, half way and a little beyond that. And no one liked it much. I was extremely disappointed. It was a slow read and lacked flow. I think we all expected it to read much quicker because it was a youth book. One person said it read much better if she could dedicate a longer chunk of time each time she picked it up. This is not one to read in ten minute increments (which is how I tend to read things these days).

The book is narrated by the character of Death set in Germany during World War II. Death encounters a little girl (the Book Thief) several times throughout her life and we hear about her life experience with a foster family and the people who live on her street, including a Jewish man they hide in their basement. We all agreed Death as narrator was a very unique and good idea. But it just didn't captivate us like we had hoped. Perhaps this is a case of having too high expectations going into the book.

Back to deciding what to read next....

3 comments:

allisonmariecat said...

Well, that's disappointing! I had read about this and thought it sounded so cool. Darn it.

Holly said...

Well a ton of other people think its great, so you shouldn't not read it based solely on what my book club thought. You might still enjoy it. ;-)

raych said...

I just had to hop on over here because I saw on Bending Bookshelf's review of this book that you were, how you say, non-plussed. And I needed some commiseration, because everyone else loves it so much and I hated it, quite vehemently.

Such a relief.