IRED Bookclub discussion

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message 1: by Marie (new)

Marie This thread is for the people who have finished the book, so there will be spoilers for the entire book here!

Be sure to check out the thread once in a while during September, as we read the book. Don't hesitate to share your opinions - likes and dislikes - and any questions or discussions about the book you might have.


message 2: by Marija (new)

Marija (marijaaleksandrova) | 3 comments Was happy to recommend this to read for this book club. Wrote my BA dissertation on this book (in conjunction with another one). It is a deceptively easy read that is why I thought it would hook in a lot of people, hopefully providing a rewarding reading experience.

It seems that most of the people who raved about it to me raved about the narrative structure and the narrator. The book hooks you in at the end (or when you discover for yourself while reading) how the narrative is set up.

A really well executed, self-reflective book.


message 3: by Marie (new)

Marie Very happy that you did recommend it! I just finished it, and I loved it so much!

There's so much to take apart, too, I won't even be scratching the surface here. But the thing that was most significant for me was the portrayal of regular people in Nazi Germany. I'm sure Max could have gone to nearly any house on Himmel Street and asked for help, and I like to think that it was like that back in those years too. What we read in the history books is very broad, but there lived millions of individuals with their own thoughts and opinions. And I guess I just like to think that there are good people everywhere.

I liked the focus on books and words, and how they can change so much for someone. The end, with Liesel tearing up a book in the library, was especially powerful.

The back of my book says straight up that 'this book is narrated by death', so I caught on to that pretty quickly. And it was a cool way of narrating the story. In those times there were a lot of death, but death itself decided to focus his attention on a nine year old girl in Munich. That's pretty neat.

It was overall an amazing and very powerful book. I'm glad I got to read it.


message 4: by Jason (last edited Oct 11, 2019 07:20PM) (new)

Jason McCracken (bundy23) It was almost everything I hate all rolled up into one. YA, precocious teenagers, heroic Germans who help Jews (usually this just comes across as revisionism), extreme sentimentality, gimmicky narrator, easily 200+ pages too long... In all honesty I went into it thinking I'd probably only read 50-100 pages and then toss it aside...

...yet somehow I loved every stupid minute of it.


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