On Reading THE BOOK THIEF

Power outages are a pain...and due to a bit of ice during the night, we had a countywide outage. 

awakened at about 4 a.m. and noticed that the fan was not running.  Getting up to check the 

clock, I immediately crawled back in my warm bed before it became a cold bed.  I didn't have long

to wait.  At 6:30 I got up and still no power.  Fetching the torch (flashlight) I went looking for my

Kindle.  I am half way through The Book Thief, and this was the perfect opportunity to get deep

into the other half.  I haven't seen the movie, which I understand is very good, but I often refuse 

to see the movie before reading the book.  Hollywood never does the book proud.  I remember  

once after reading Dean Koontz's The Watchers for the third time going to see the movie.  The

only thing vaguely familiar was the beautiful Golden Retriever.  What a waste of money.

So as I am reading The Book Thief, I noticed something.  My face was in turmoil.  It couldn't smile,

it wouldn't hold even a hint of a smile.  I stopped to think back on other favorite books and going

down the list in my mind realized that most books have humor in them, even if the books are not

intended to be funny.  It makes a nice break in the book from the terror or the haunting or

whatever the nature of the book might be.  Humor is definitely not the nature of The Book Thief. 

The nature of this book is not really fear either.  The nature of this book is Doldrums...because that

is where you are from page one onward.  The Holocaust is the main thrust of the book, but even

in The Diary of Anne Frank you smile on occasion and are even able to laugh out loud.  But not

here.  I hope I am not putting you off reading this spell binding  book because that is exactly what

it is, spell binding.  I find my self putting off the last few pages hating to come to the end of it

Because I know I will  never want to read it again,