The Book Thief

Since this is the book that inspired me, I felt like it was right to start off with it.
I love reading. I remember my mom read to me and my siblings from a fairly young age and looking forward to those experiences as much as any movie. My sister and I read to each other most nights for the majority of our junior high and high school years and continued when we were rooming together in college my sophomore year. Reading has been an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember. Reading The Book Thief made me remember these things along with allowing me to see something I've seen a few times before from a different angle.
Words are powerful things. They allow us to express ourselves. They can build and they can tear down. They can inspire good and bad. The ability to read words can change who we are and set us free or cage us in depending the words we choose to indulge in.
Because the main character in The Book Thief, a young girl named Liesel Memminger growing up in World War II Germany, cannot read when the story begins I felt that the book placed a certain value on the ability to read. Its something that Liesel struggles with. Learning to read brings her closer to her foster father and closer to others in her community. And it teaches her the power that words can have through her experiences with her family hiding a Jewish man in their basement and her contrasting experiences with the Hitler Youth.
I realize that there are other books, especially about the Holocaust, that have similar stories behind them. Maybe not so focused on reading, but the main points don't vary much. It's the narrator that really makes this story different. Death is our narrator, and the things that he observes through out the story are still running through my mind a day later.
I read a few reviews on a reading website I use for book recommendations (GoodReads), and some of the more negative ones bothered me. One commented that it was stupid that Death was portrayed as kind hearted and sentimental. I don't know that I would say he was 100% that way. He tried to remain disconnected. But really, why should a person be afraid of Death if they have lived a good life? This was stated in the book to a certain degree. Death was a change from the norm and it shook things up a little. He had a perspective on humans and their beauty and horror that most narrators don't give to this particular story. It made me think.
The other part of this book that I absolutely loved was the rich relationships that the characters had. They felt so real, so human to me. None were perfect. Liesel's foster mother seemed like someone I would dislike in the beginning, always swearing (I promise, its not as bad as this makes it sound), criticizing, yelling and doling out punishments. But she truly loved Liesel and had an unconventional way of showing it.
I instantly loved Rudy, the neighbor boy who painted himself black with coal dust after the Olympics so he could be like Jesse Owens. Perhaps this was because I had my own Jesse Owens obsession when I was around his age, but I fell in love with Rudy and his boldness.
And I instantly loved Liesel's foster father in the same way. His kindness. The moment he came to Liesel after her first nightmare, I knew I loved Hans Hubermann like she did. He taught her to read, though he knew little himself. And he showed her how to trust people and love them, even when the rest of their country hated them.
The Nazi candy store owner down the street even had some qualities that, while they were not particularly endearing, made her human.
Without ruining the entire book for you, its hard to say everything about this book that I loved. However, I can say that it reminded me of why I feel like reading is so vitally important, no matter what you read.