Friday Recommends #19

So it's Friday again, and that means another exciting Friday Recommends!
This is an exciting book blog hop that book bloggers can take part in once a week to share with their followers, the books that they most recommend reading!

The rules for Friday Recommends are:

• Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
• Please consider adding the blog hop button to your blog somewhere, so others can find it easily and join in too! Help spread the word! The code will be at the bottom of the post under the linky.
• Pick a book that you've read, and have enjoyed enough to recommend to other readers. It can be a book you've read recently, or a book you read years ago - it's up to you - but make sure you tell us why you love the book (like a mini review). You make the post as long or as short as you like.
• Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of this post after posting your blog post.
• Put a link back to pen to paper (http://vogue-pentopaper.blogspot.com) somewhere in your post.
• Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 

Waterstones synopsis:

HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall. SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH. It's a small story, about: a girl, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW - DEATH WILL VISIT THE BOOK THIEF THREE TIMES

This story is intelligent, gripping and well-written, but the best thing about it - by far - for me, is the narrative style. Death is literally personified in this book. He is bought to life as the narrative character, the authorial voice, and it works so incredibly well, that he just strolls off the pages. But he is not a frightening character, but a friendly one - soul collecting is simply his day job. He is, by a long way, one of my favourite fictional characters, which does seem to be a rather odd thing to say about Death.

The story itself is intriguing. It's a wonderful, potent mixture of the fantasy that arrises from the narrator, and the terrible realities & effects of war and destruction that we see both through his eyes, and through the eyes of the Book Thief, Liesel, a young German girl.
It's a beautiful, horrowing, poignant tale that shows us World War II from a completely different perspective.

I couldn't recommend this book more highly! It's giving me goosebumps just thinking about it again!









What do you recommend this week? Join in with Friday Recommends and let us know!
Add your link below in the linky!

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