One of the first things my Dad told me about reading is that
no matter how often you read a book, it will be like new to you. You will
always discover something different, always find a different kind of meaning in
it for you in that exact point in your life. I hear so many people say they
would never read a book twice, but really, it isn’t about just knowing the
plot. You can appreciate a book for all its different forms of beauty,
depending on where you are in life.
You know that eternal #firstworldproblem of running out of
space for books, and having to decide which ones are gonna go to the charity
shop? Some people find it easy – read it once, and it goes. But for me, and
possibly for some others, it’s truly the test of a book’s true heart – is it
gonna be a one-night-stand, or a life-long romance? Those books never leave me.
Literally. And those books are the truly great ones. And sometimes you don’t
even know. Sometimes it’s in the hands of a book-fate fairy, if you will, to
reintroduce you to an old, forgotten love.
What I’m trying to say, this isn’t the first time that I
have read The Book Thief. And it’s the second time around I think I could get a
fuller, rounder, deeper appreciation of it. What a wonderful, wonderful book.
The story: intense, powerful, human, flaying your heart open,
for want of a better comparison, like a china town duck.
The characters: quirky, idiosyncratic, bordering on weird,
flawed, real, but truly lovable because of it.
The writing: simply beautiful, with turns of phrases that
made me underline them.
The perspective: as told by Death: creating an “intimate
distance”, a paradoxical but close observational point of view that evoke
satire as much as rich humanity.
The Book Thief is universally amazing: one of those books
you can recommend to everyone and not fail.
Please read it.
I’m not kidding.
Do!
Yours, bookishly,
Patty
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