the book thief

I actually felt quite horrible when I was scanning my shelves after putting away the book I read prior to this when my eyes fell on this book and I realized I had never read it. I got it for Christmas one year while I was in high school; likely the year that it was a best seller. Somehow it got shuffled to the point where it became a normal fixture in my collection and became out of sight. But voila! The Book Thief's time had come!

And guys, I have really enjoyed being extra with my book pics. It's great and I definitely forced Brendon to help me capture it.

Death tells us about the plight of Liesel Meminger during the rise of Nazi Germany in the late 1930's. Leisel has it rough. First she loses her brother and then is thrown into foster care during war times. Luckily she finds herself with a family that is on the right side of history and they fight for the Jew's and shelter one for many months on a promise that Hans (her foster father)had made years prior.

He was not well-educated or political, but if nothing else, he was a man who appreciated fairness. A Jew had once saved his life and he couldn't forget that. He couldn't join a party that antagonized people in such a way. Also, much like Alex Steiner, some of his most loyal customers were Jewish. Like many of the Jews believed, he didn't think the hatred could last, and it was a conscious decision not to follow Hitler. On many levels, it was a disastrous one.

How frightening that this mantra is something we're currently hearing the United States! But Hans? This man is GOLDEN. G O L D E N.

But Hans Junior wasn't finished. He stepped closer and said, "You're either for the Führer or against him - and I can see that you're against him. You always have been." Liesel watched Hans Junior in the face, fixated on the thinness of his lips and the rocky line of his bottom teeth. "It's pathetic - how a man can stand by an do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great."

Prior to our current leadership I always questioned if I had grown up during segregation and such would I have been on the right side of things? If my government was eloquently telling me that people were bad and simply did not have the right to be equal would I have stood up or even thought that something was fucked up? I like to definitely think that I would have been. I like to think that I would have done the right thing. Listening to Voldemort speak confirms notions that I would've done the right thing.

This book was really great and I wish that I had read it sooner, but part of me is glad that I didn't read it until I was out of my teens and well into adulthood. It's heartbreaking and also hopeful. I would definitely recommend it.



Saumensch.
Leia