The Book Thief #2

I have been reading The Book Thief, and it is pretty good.  The book itself doesn't have a suspenseful plot, yet, but it has really good characters.  Each character has a very "human-like" personality with many positive and negative traits.  They interact with each other very realistically.  

I feel the book gives a perfect example of what life was like for an average German family in the middle of World War Two.  The main character's, Liesel's, family does not support Hitler and the Nazi's.  They have been negatively impacted by the Nazi's, but they fake support.  They even are hiding a Jew in their house.  The dad is trying to join the Nazi party to get on the safe side, and in public they pretend to love and "hail" Hitler to stay safe in their Nazi town.  In class when we talked about the by-stander effect and how everyone who knew about the genocide didn't do anything, I think this book answers the question of why.  People either supported  the Nazi's completely or were to afraid to speak out.  Everyone kept quiet about their disagreements, so if people did share the same beliefs, they didn't know it.  People also didn't want to help the less fortunate because they were so worried about themselves.  They either had to completely follow Hitler, weather they wanted to or not, or were going to be taken away/killed.  

I think the book is really good.  It is a great story told in a different way than most other books.  It's interesting to read a World War Two story through a different perspective than most (the German perspective oppose to the jew/genocide victim).  

Outside Reading #1

For my outside reading book I am reading The Book Thief.  The book is different from most of the other books I have read.  The overall book itself is an easy read, but it's filled with vocabulary words that I don't know, which makes it more difficult to read.  The author also writes a few words in German which makes it hard to understand as well.  The book is also written in a unique way that is hard to describe.  The story is told in a very matter-of-fact way.  It has little paragraphs, almost like headlines, spaced in between the paragraphs that basically stop the story to answer a question, and then the story proceeds (kind of like in The Princess Bride when the grandpa talks about the book to his grandson, and the story takes a break).  The book is told from death's perspective.  I think it's interesting the way the story is told.  The book seems as if it is more about the "story of the story" than the "story of the characters", if that makes sense.  The book so far is about a girl living with her foster parents to escape the violence of WW2, and she stole a book, that she can't read.  I am just in the beginning and the story is still building so I don't have anything to say about it now, just that the book itself is interesting.  So far it is good.