The Book Thief

In WWII Germany, books are becoming rarer and rarer. Originally troubled by letters, words, sentences, paragraphs and books, Liesel discovers a passion for them that causes her to steal books. Observed and narrated by Death, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel's experiences during WWII punctuated by stolen books.

The bad: Everyone is always swearing at each other, mostly in German, but often not. Also, Liesel is, you know, a thief. I thought this was going to be some heroic, "save the knowledge" type of thing, but she just steals them because she can. And she steals other things too, like food, because she is hungry. A bad thing? Some might consider a book narrated by Death to be, I don't know, just generally a evil book, but it's not. Death is just a different point of view.

The good: I liked Liesel's dad. He was kind and understanding.

My view: I got this book out of the library like three years ago, because even then I had heard of it, but I just really couldn't persuaded myself to read it. But it was recommended to me, so I got it again. Really, I can't see it. This is one of those books that thinks if it is stark and strident about something bad, it is good. The really sad thing is that everyone else seems to believe it! I found this book dull. Very dull.