The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I was a little worried that with Death narrating this book, the story would be too morbid and creepy. Also, I wondered what Death would even talk about: Would there be an actual story? Or just a recounting of millions of deaths? To my relief, it was very readable, and Death is even able to offer some objective humor. He tells the story of Liesel Meminger, and although he jumps around quite a bit, and spoils the ending on more than one occasion, it's still very easy to follow. I've talked to some people who didn't really like the more modern writing style of this book (they felt like Death's bolded notes broke up the text and that some of the descriptions were just too obscure and artsy). I actually loved the writing style...it was one of my favorite things about the book. I love it when an author packs a lot of layers of description into one sentence, when he describes a very basic element of nature (like the sky) in a completely new way. Markus Zusak does just that.

I was disappointed with the amount of bad language. I can understand including some in order to be true to the culture, time period, and class of people, but all the variations on taking the name of God in vain bothered me.

The characters are wonderful though. And I was very impressed that the three men that are most influential in Liesel's life (Rudy, Papa, and Max) are all good in their own way and do everything they can to help and love Liesel. Really, all the characters seem so real, you'll want to go look them up on wikipedia to find out the rest of their stories. :-)

I wrote this review before creating this blog.