Review: The Book Thief

So I finished The Book Thief today, which was much earlier than I had calculated. When I started reading, my pace was really slow, so I thought this would be a book that would last me around 3 weeks. But here I am a week and a half after buying it, completely finished. I got a lot faster once I got into Markus' writing style (which is fantastic, by the way). I'm really glad I read this. It's good to see that yet again, John Green and his loyal nerdfighters know how to pick a good book. 

Now I shall synopsise. Basically, it follows the story of a young girl during WWII Nazi Germany, living with her foster parents, when they offer to hide a jew in their basement. I'm not going to say anymore, for fear of spoiling it, because I hate having things spoiled for me. It makes me really angry when people tell me the ending of something before I've read it. This is why I usually don't include a synopsis with my reviews, and when I do I keep it to a bare minimum. Also, I'm kind of crap at picking out points to include in a synopsis, so it's also a good avoidence tactic. Just FYI. But yeah, speaking of spoiling things, part of the reason I found it a little difficult to adjust to Markus' writing style was because he would forward parts of the plot from later in earlier parts. The narrator was spoiling the story. This felt kind of unnatural, like when you take a peep at a later page. I felt almost naughty, as though I shouldn't know those things just yet... but then the narrator was offering them to me... I wasn't actually cheating, although it felt like it... a bit.

Seriously, though, I can see why this book has been so critically acclaimed. It was truly amazing. It captured exactly how that war era must have been for the german citizens. It's funny, because I never realised that we really don't hear much of their story. We hear about the jews in concentration camps run by evil Nazi officers, both survivors and victims. We hear Hitler demonised, but we don't hear much about the actual citizens who lived in the country over which he reigned. I think many of us assume that all germans approved of Hitler's values, and his actions as political leader; I know at least I didn't stop to think that there mught have been some who were opposed. It was truly fascinating. 

This one definitely gets 5 stars. 100% brilliant. I'd recommend it to anybody and everybody. Markus Zusak is bloody amazing, and I will definitely be on the lookout for his other books. 

The next book on my list is a romantic novel. Not a trashy bodice ripper with Fabio on the cover (I avoid those at all costs). It's Once In A Lifetime by Cathy Kelly, an Irish author, and it's her new book. I might see this Friday if I can get to Brisbane City Hall to meet her and get my book signed by her. I've already read 2 of her other books (Just Between Us and Always And Forever) and I quite like her. This one is labelled as "her best book yet" by Marian Keyes, so I'm kind of looking forward to it. Will post a review when I'm done, as always, so that's something to look forward to I guess (it'll give me something to blog about in any case)

Hope you're all well

Till Thursday (which is probably Wednesday for most of you :P)

<3