Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Dusty Reads (4)

Dusty Reads is a weekly meme, hosted here, featuring a book that has been sitting unread on our home shelf for some time. To participate, add your link at the bottom. 
If you wish, you can grab the button and find more information here.

My pick this week:

The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Published March 2006


It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist- books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found.


With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.


The Book Thief was recommended to me by numerous Goodreads friends. It has an incredible amount of great reviews written for it, and it has won plenty of awards including the Printz Honor award. So, why has it been sitting on my shelf for, oh... about 8 months? To be honest. I'm kind of scared of it. War stories can be a hit or miss with me, but Death being the narrator of this one really intrigues me and by the reviews it sounds incredibly interesting. 


What did you think of The Book Thief?