The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Book Thief is actually one of the FEW books that at some point I got tired of reading or I lost the drive to finish reading the whole thing. It took me half a year to finish it (honestly), given the additional circumstances that I’ve been really busy with school. But once a book is really good/awesome, it doesn’t matter how busy I am with school works because I’d prefer to stay up all night just to finish a book. But then, I never felt that *awesomeness* in TBT that would eventually urge me to finish it right away. As I have said, it took me 6 months.

The reason why I was not in the hurry finishing the whole thing is because I got bored with it. The first half of the book feels like Death is just narrating some story about a girl who is trying to read. And I was so frustrated with Death being a total spoiler machine!

Anyway, For 5 months I struggled with the book, trying to read it bit by bit until I finished about 300 hundred pages or more. And then summer vacation came and at last I was able to read the the remaining half (fortunately, in a way that I could read it without getting bored). I was thinking that, “Ugh. How come this book made others cry?? I wouldn’t cry at the end of the story because I already know what is going to happen to everyone and I’ve prepared myself.” (all thanks to Death being really generous with spoilers). It sucks you know? I want to read a tragic book that will give me all the emotion at one blow and I would be just like “oh my God! why did it happen?? The world is so cruel!” *insert sobbing moment here*. But NO, The Book Thief will prepare you to what will happen at the end, and it will give you the notion that you already know what’s going to happen, therefore, you are prepared and the impact wouldn’t be so hard. And it sucks for me because I really wanted the impact to be so sudden and excruciating.

It turned out that Zusak is really good because he still made me sob like a baby despite all the spoilers Death has fed me. I didn’t see it coming… the emotions and all the hurt and unfairness of the world that was thrown to Liesel emanated in that one tragic moment. Specially when Liesel found their bodies. God. I couldn’t stop crying at that part. Because even though Death has warned you and prepared you for what is coming next, you can never really prepare your heart to accept what will happen because you’ve grown attached to the characters and you’ve cared for them more than you’ll ever admit. Well, I cared so much for that boy with the ‘hair the color of lemons’ and I was heartbroken over how Liesel’s kiss is way too late.

So I will just list 3 reasons why I love this book:

1. Death is so full of metaphor. (well, I love finding metaphorical resonances in the simplest of things)
2. This is not the typical holocaust story because it gave me a different perspective of the holocaust. It made me realize that during the reign of the nazis, not every german can be called superior over the jews. It made me realize that they are actually all standing on thin ice. The jews are battling with the cruelty of their destiny, and some of the germans are fighting a battle within themselves. A battle of conscience and belief and the thing that they ought to do. And a war is a war, Death takes a life on both sides, everybody becomes a victim and their suffering shouldn’t be less significant than the other, because after all, they all felt pain and they have been deprived of happiness in different ways we could ever imagine.
3. You will care for each one of the characters no matter how mean they’ve been. i.e. Frau Holtzapfel

View all my reviews

That was my reaction upon reaching page 124 of John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines. REALLY? I mean really?? Do I really have to see another fuggin equation with a sine wave and everything…? UGH.

And I was like…
“John Green!! I Dingleberry this!!!”

OH.MY.GOD
The Catching Fire teaser trailer is out! Aaaaaaahhhhhh! I can’t even.. all the feels! stoked to death!

poygago:

Kahit di na ako active. :|

Been there. Done that.