The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I skimmed this book last night. It's one of many on the list for the Great American Read, and one of many on that list that appeal to teens and young adults, and are suitable for parents and teens to read together.

I skimmed it because I read the first five pages or so and realized that I quite disliked the idea that the narrator of the book is a supernatural figure that invisibly gathers souls. It reminded me a little bit of The Lovely Bones, which was enormously popular at the time that I read it. This novel has been a bestseller for a very long time.

And, in fact, the framework of the narrator who sees things from above, led me, as I was reading, to see the book in very cinematic terms. In fact, as I skimmed the book there were many times that the mental pictures formed in my mind were similar to crane shots. I know that this novel was made into a movie a few years ago, and I think I'd be interested in watching the movie to see how the filmmaker's mental pictures compared with my own.

This book has been loved by many, but I imagine will not appeal to everyone. As a work of imagination, I admire Zusak's novel very greatly. I also admire that the Hubermanns were both ordinary and heroic; their story was lost as many stories have been lost. Zusak gives that lost history a record.