The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This book was a little boring in the beginning. But then towards the last 200 pages the pace was very fast, leaving me in awe after each chapter. Here is the thing:I didn’t know anything about this book until I started reading it. I am not one of those people who read the synopsis beforehand. I just heard that it was a great book and so I had to read it.

It circled around Germany before and during World War II.How this war was a lot to take…not on the world but on the Germans. What I really liked about this novel is that it focused on the Germans during this devastating period of time. And especially on the book thief. The book thief is the main character of this book and we witness her growth over the years.

She suffered the sight of watching her brother dying. And this had impacted her for a very long time. Then she developed a passion for reading. But there was one problem: BOOKS WERE FORBIDDEN. Apparently Hitler didn’t like books so everyone was forced to throw all their books to a pile. That pile was later to be burned to ashes. That however did not add a single flame onto The Book Thief's passion. The Book Thief had the willingness to sacrifice her life for a book.

This book really showed me how it was like back then. The clock kept ticking in 2013 but my whole being was in the late 30s and early 40s.

I don’t recommend this book to people who don’t like history and politics. I mean I like history but this book took forever to explain or discuss anything historical.

Fun fact: of course there were a lot of German words thrown here and there. I don’t know German but I recognized the word "Leader" and "My Struggle" in the German language. I remembered them from history class in high school. Did I mention that I love history? And so that made me feel proud.

The writing style was just amazing. I mean that last sentence was a great way to end this book. I even tweeted two quotes from the book. So many great meanings and lyrical words.

The first thought that came to me after finishing this book was "I gotta check out more of Markus Zusak's novels."

Every You, Every Me by David Levithan

Release Date: September 13^th 2011

Publisher: Knopf Books

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 245 pages

Source: Library

Series: None

 In this high school-set psychological tale, a tormented teen named Evan starts to discover a series of unnerving photographs—some of which feature him. Someone is stalking him . . . messing with him . . . threatening him. Worse, ever since his best friend Ariel has been gone, he's been unable to sleep, spending night after night torturing himself for his role in her absence. And as crazy as it sounds, Evan's starting to believe it's Ariel that's behind all of this, punishing him. But the more Evan starts to unravel the mystery, the more his paranoia and insomnia amplify, and the more he starts to unravel himself. Creatively told with black-and-white photos interspersed between the text so the reader can see the photos that are so unnerving to Evan, Every You, Every Me is a one-of-a-kind departure from a one-of-a-kind author.

Now this is my second time reading a book by David Levithan. Now I can confirm that David has his own writing style. It is very distinguishable from others. He builds incredible setting by using simple words that include great emotion. One of the things that threw me off reading this book is the fact that half of the book has strikethrough paragraphs; I found it hard to read. However, the strikethrough helped in understanding the story bit by bit.

The novel had pictures in it. Each picture cried emotion. In fact, David was inspired by the pictures to write the plot.

The book was what I like to describe light dark. It was full of raw emotion and regret. Evan (the main character) is sad and depressed for the loss of his friend. He tries to find out who is behind sending him random pictures of Ariel. Ariel: we don’t get to see her at all, but we read all about her from Evan's point of view. He lost his friends and apparently the loss of a friend was so hard on Evan, it stopped him from living.

Levithan successfully made this novel a unique one. I will be thinking about it for a little while.