My Books

Grace's favorites book montage

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Lightning Thief
Cinder
The Hunger Games
Eldest
Savvy
The Giver
Eragon
Scarlet
Legend
The Red Pyramid
The Host
Uglies
The Alchemist
The Book Thief
The Fault in Our Stars
Moon Over Manifest
If I Stay
I Am Number Four
The Angel Experiment


Grace Tang's favorite books »

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Update #2: The Book Thief

The progress I've made in this book...It's astonishing. Almost half way!  I can't believe I'm writing a 3rd post on the same book. At this rate, there could be another 6 more...I'm working on it though. Don't worry.

Okay so I guess I'll choose a random prompt.
The most important line from a chapter is...Let me find one...
"As it had turned out, the promised return visit in the room of darkness didn't take days; it had taken a week and a half. Then another week till the next, and another, until he lost all sense of the passing of days and hours" (Zusak 158)

This quote doesn't have anything to do with Liesel. It's not even part of her story. She knows nothing about it. But this man, Max, I think you could guess it. He's a Jew, a Jew during Hitler's reign. He's in hiding waiting for people to help him get to the Hubermann house. So he can go into more hiding? This is his life. Scared, alone, starving. This quote is important because it allows the reader to see how bad life really was for people. It helps connect the story to what most people have heard about Hitler and the Nazi party. This quote has a huge impact over the plot of this story. It's Zusak's own way of adding foreshadowing. Imagining how much change is going to happen to Liesel when Max arrives at her house. It makes you want to keep on reading. And I shall do that.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Update: The Book Thief

I'm having a lot of trouble finding time to read. I haven't made much progress in The Book Thief, but I've got to write about something.

I guess I'll focus on the main character, Liesel Meminger, and the relationships she has developed since moving into her foster family. The first is her foster father, who she was immediately drawn to. "...Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Liesel, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot"(Zusak 34). Ever since Liesel's brother died, she has had nightmares where she would wake up screaming. And it was always her Papa who was there. One time he changed her bed sheets and found a book, "The Grave  Digger's Handbook". Liesel actually found this book in the snow during her brother's burial. I loved how Hans Hubermann taught his daughter to read with this book. An odd book, but an important one to her. They would have "midnight classes" whenever she woke up from her nightmares. This was the start to her obsession with books and their words.
Her foster mother, Rosa Hubermann, was a complete different story. I mean she calls her daughter saumensch, a pig. I mean she does love Liesel, but I guess has an odd way of showing it?
And then there's her friend, Rudy Steiner. They met playing soccer. "Insane or not, Rudy was always destined to be Liesel's best friend. A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship"(Zusak 48). Yeah...That quote doesn't make much sense. But that's why you read the book to get the whole story about "The Jesse Owens Incident" where Rudy painted himself with charcoal and pretended he was in the Olympics. Anyway, let's just say Rudy and Liesel are best friends and he always sticks with her, while all the other kids are bullying instead.