The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Rated: 5 stars

Read: June 23, 2020

Eight years in between readings I think, meant to be perhaps because I learned more in the ensuing years. Had accumulated more backstory of the war through several mediums, most significantly after having read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, plus several fictions like Eye of the Needle by Ken Follet to more domestic locals in La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith. Not least of which was my visit to Dover Castle, the tunnel tour.

It was heartbreak all over again, of course. It was damnation and redemption all in one told by the guy we all heard of, the one we’ll all have the chance to meet. The writing style took some getting used to then and even a little still now but I find I liked it because the use of similes, metaphors, and a technique I can’t quite pin down, they made paintings of scenes.

At the beginning of the book, the clinging, filthy, and bruised girl was in many ways similar to the end. She was still filthier, and battered and clung still to what she could. But she was different too.

Reading again

So there’s a lot that’s happened and yet not happened in the months of my inactivity. I suppose one of the more concerning for me right now is my reading slump.

In the sidebar to the right, there is my Goodreads currently-reading shelf, and it’s hardly changed, and in a way, maybe it reflects some fragment of my mental state, that is to say, unfocused and indecisive.

So I have decided to forcibly get over it and push back the ones I have on the list to casual reading (as in way away in the background reading) and end the year with some house cleaning. Life, frankly, is too short.

Book Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction

10th Ed.: Jan 13, 2015, Penguin Random House

1st Ed.: March 3, 2005, Dutton Children’s Books

Read: November 2018 (first read in 2015)

Rated it: 3.5 stars 

What was okay for me:

1. Pudge. I can’t say I particularly too much for the guy. I mean, he’s smart and likable enough, sure. He can be exasperating, I’d kick his ass if I could. Self-centered but not in a conventional or conspicuous way. By the end of the book, however, he rose a few rungs in my esteem, not that he’d give a shit but whatever.