I love hearing from authors and publicists who’d like me to read and review their books. If you have a title you think I’d be interested in, please feel free to contact me at ibetnoonehasthisdamnid@yahoo.com .
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I look forward to hearing from you!
Okay, I had so much fun doing the last search results post, That Brought You Here?!? That I wanted to do another.
When I was scrolling down my stats page, one of the search terms caught my eye, and I wondered if enough time had passed to post another. It’s been over a week so… YuP! 😀 Here goes. The search terms are in bold, btw.
william shakespeare (dr. faustus) ~ Dr. Faustus, meet William Shakespeare 🙂
compare anne frank to the book thief! ~ NO! I don’t wanna!
invention of “invisible shirt”~ Yeah, I’m selling them out of my invisible store, and they come with an invisible receipt. I guarantee all eyes will be on you when you wear the matching invisible pants. I’ll sell both to you and throw in a pair of invisible Nikes all for a visible $20 bill. 😀
gary larsen plant comics~ Personally, I plant vegetables and herbs, maybe a few annuals, but hey… to each his own. I wonder if any of his comics have been famous? Tom Arnold must of been a bad year for the old winyard, eh?
isabel ice custard ~ It’s the movie version of Custard the Dragon. When Isabel, Ink, Wink, Mustard and Custard are flying over the Andes on their way to a rugby match, the plane crashes and they are forced to do the unthinkable to survive. Custard kept crying for his nice safe cage, until Isabel couldn’t take it anymore and turned him into Dragon tartar.
half-blood prince’s comments on love pot ~ He said, “Dude… DUDE… duuuuuude…. ya gotta try this pot…. one long drag and you like… totallylove everyone. *puff.. puff… blow* DuuUuuuUuDe! I love you, man!”
where can i read vampire kisses blood~ Anywhere you want, dawg, as long as you buy something every couple hours so the don’t think you’re loitering, home slice.
cheap: vampire kisses: blood relatives ~ This would be the Redneck family reunion slash speed dating slash wedding version.
read vampire kisses vol 2 free ~ Dude… it’s called the LIBRARY. If that’s not free enough for you, I don’t know what to tell ya. Get the audio book? Except it’s a manga book. Have someone read it for you, then transfer the memory into your brain… It’d probably have horrible side-effects, and you’d probably grow a tail and develop a tic, but it’d be free.
And… of course… there are all of the BOOGER searches, some of which made me swallow my tongue…
is it dangerous to eat your boogers? Yes, that’s why you look left, then right, then left again before taking a nibble… oh, wait, that’s crossing the street.
how to eat boogers ~ Now… mind you, I’m no expert on this, but it seems fairly straight forward… freshly picked, breaded and deep-fried and served with marinara sauce, right?
cure smelly boogers ~ Dude! Stop sniffing your gym shoes! Get some Odor-Eaters or something!
im 18 and still eat boogers, and 20 years old and eats boogers why~ Seriously, an even better question is WHY did GOOGLE think I knew the answers?!
throw poo ~ okay… here you go…
What are some of the weird search terms that have led people to your blog? Or what’s the oddest search you’ve ever done?
Publisher: Transworld Publishers (div of Random House)
Publish Date: 2005
ISBN: 9780552773898
Miscellaneous: Don’t forget to check out this review’s companion post. It includes info on The Book Thief‘s future as a movie, and several quotes from the book I wasn’t able to work into this review.
On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down, slowing down…
Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their French words. I watched their love-visions and freed them from their fear.
I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. In complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the colour of rain. Even the clouds tried to look the other way.
Sometimes, I imagined how everything appeared above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye.
They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.
–The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, page 358
I finished The Book Thief by Markus Zasuk on Tuesday, but have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Normally, I sit down and write the review as soon as I finish a book, then pick up the next book and move on. However, when I read the last words of The Book Thief :
A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR: I am haunted by humans.
I found myself not wanting to let the book go. I told myself I wanted to wait to review it so it could sink in and ruminate. I had already posted it on BookMooch figuring, like most books, I wouldn’t want to reread it, and it was mooched up right away, but now I don’t want to give it up. I have put off starting Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because I don’t want to put anything else in there ever again. All of this is utterly baffling to me because I have never had an attachment or a reaction to any book like this.
The book itself, plot-wise and such, is easy to sum up. It is the story of Liesel Meminger, the book thief, who comes to live the Hubermann’s at age nine as their foster daughter. On the way to Molching, where the Hubermann’s live, Liesel’s younger brother dies and is buried in a cemetery at the next stop. It is in this place she “steals” her first book, The Gravedigger’s Handbook, after it falls out of the pocket of the apprentice gravedigger. As the novel progresses, Liesel makes friends with other children on Himmel (a word that means “heaven”) Street, the Hubermann’s take in and hide a Jew, and Liesel discovers the awe-inspiring private library of the mayor’s wife, from which she liberates a book now and then. All this is told by the book’s narrator, Death.
Summarizing the book is simple. Explaining and conveying how it effected me, the reader, is anything but. First of all, Zusak writes with a poetic beauty that captures the way children take in the world around them. He often crosses the communication of the five senses:
At times, in that basement, she woke up tasting the sound of the accordion in her hears. She could feel the sweet burn of champagne on her tongue. -p. 365
One line I remember but was unable to find said something like “The smell of the sound of my footsteps,” and there are so many more lines like these in the book.
Another concept Zusak descriptively conveys is the power of words.</p>
Once, words had rendered Liesel useless, but now, when she sat on the floor, with the mayor’s wife at her husband’s desk, she felt an innate sense of power. It happened every time she deciphered a new word or pieced together a sentence. -p. 154
She couldn’t tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed. -p. 246
After a miscarriaged pause, the mayor’s wife edged forward and picked up the book. She was battered and beaten up, and not from smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from words. From Liesel’s words. -p. 273
Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. “I will never fire a gun,” he said. “I will not have to…” His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible… He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany. It was a nation of Farmed thoughts. -p. 451
Frighteningly, it was exactly through the power of words and a healthy dose of charisma that Hitler was able to accomplish all the evil that was done in his name. He himself didn’t do the physical work, that would have required him to be in several places at once making that impossible, but through the words of his speeches and policies others took up his cause. Even more frightening is that his words are still used and followed to this day by some.
Also, through the use of Death, the ultimate impartial onlooker, as narrator Zusak is able to make epiphanic observations about human beings:
In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer – proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water. -p. 171
I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men. They are not. They’re running at me. -p. 182
Death also points out that, beginning with houses of cards and sandcastles, humans “watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse and… smile at the beauty of destruction.” And he states a couple of times that the human child is much cannier than the adult.
By far, however, the most important observation Death makes, the concept that sets the tenor of the entire book is this:
AN OBSERVATION
A pair of train guards.
A pair of gravediggers.
When it came down to it, one
of them called the shots. The
other did what he was told.The
question is, what if the
other is a lot more than one?
-p. 30
What happens when there are a lot more people who simply do as there told, without question? What happens to a society when a madman can rule through eloquent speeches, expressing ideals of hatred, and inspiring others to carry out morally reprehensible acts of violence and wickedness?
The Book Thief by Markus Zasuk is haunting and breath-taking, poetically beautiful and filled with truth. Death often expresses sardonic, almost bitter, statements of irony, all the while telling the reader he is impartial. He points out both the evil and the good of humans, expresses both disappointment and admiration of the species among whom he walks and collects. It is a Homeric work that is full of joy and sorrow, anger and forgiveness, love and loss. It is the story of a handful of people in Nazi Germany during 1939-1945; adults, children, Catholic, Nazi, and Jew, the “free” (was anyone truly free then?) and the hidden, the epitome of the “master race” and the persecuted and annihilated.
If you’ll take a look to the right, you’ll notice I’ve added a new widget in the sidebar labelled “Mt. TBR Hall of Fame.” This is my Top 10 favorite books of all-time. This, honestly, is an imprecise feat, as I know I’ll think of a book that I liked better but forgot, or I’ll read a book that will replace a book on here, and that is okay because I can always edit it. When I added the widget, I was in the middle of reading The Book Thief, but it had already impressed me enough to be listed in 6th place… and I hadn’t even finished it yet. And after finishing it and digesting it and writing this review, it has moved up to first place.
Obviously, as The Book Thief by Markus Zasuk is now my all-time favorite book, I give it 5 out of 5 stars. It should be included in school curriculum alongside The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night. The Book Thief has both historicity and literary eloquence, and will undoubtedly become a classic.
Again, don’t forget to check out this review’s companion post.
Tainted by Brooke Morgan
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Strange But True America: Weird Tales from All 50 States by John Hafnor
Red Letters by Tom Davis
Dragon House by John Shors
Book reviews, entertaining and humorous posts, as well as memes and giveaways, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR is a fun and informative place to relax in the shade!
sex with sleeping doll ~ I believe this is illegal, and you knowChatty Cathy’s watching and’ll tell everyone…
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 