Struggling to continue The Book Thief in Back entries: 2013 - 2015

I’m really struggling with The Book Thief. Although I like the concept, the writing comes across as very stilted. I’m not sure how I feel about Death narrating, but the asides and “observations” come across as a bit much at times. Kind of makes it difficult to really get into the story properly. I’ve given it 195 pages so far, out of 578. I really want to like this book, I really do. The problem is that I can’t get into it.

A bit of a shame, I was in one of the bookstores recently with someone and I noticed a stand for a certain promotion this chain does every year. “The most popular books as voted by our customers online”. The bookstore is doing a “3 books for the price of 2” on all the “popular” books, and I picked up Rebecca and The Poisonwood Bible and was stuck trying to decide on the third. I saw a few titles I could see myself reading. This person pointed to The Book Thief and said “did you want to get that one? I don’t think you’ve read it” I figured I may as well. What a mistake. When I got home, A (one of the couch surfers mentioned in a previous entry) reckoned it was “such a good book” - I’m sorry but I really can’t see it.

This is going in a small pile of books and it’s going either to a book exchange or donated to the Salvos or Good Samaritans. I’ve not decided yet…

A good book for me is one that I’m glad to have read, a book that I feel is enriching. An excellent book is one that I will find myself re-reading, and still find something that strikes a cord. I’m sure there’s other books that cover the subject matter a whole lot better. I don’t mind “easy reads” in terms of writing style (loved the Harry Potter series), but the writing needs to flow a lot better and there’s got to be more character development. I have to be able to care for the characters.

This is the first book in a long time I’ve put down and couldn’t be bothered picking back up to read “just one more sentence, one more paragraph”. I won’t be putting a review of The Book Thief in my book journal - I never do with books I do not finish. It feels like cheating.

Last updated January 01, 2015