We did things a little differently this month, and put out a call for your help in choosing our October Book Club Selection. As a result, our book for this month is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which was suggested by Kay of Kay’s Bookshelf.
As you may have noticed, The Book Thief comes complete with it’s own set of discussion questions, but we found the questions in the book were a little more ‘book report’ than ‘group chat’, so we’ve just used portions of them along with a few additions of our own to help get the discussion going. Please don’t feel limited to the questions we’ve listed below, feel free to use others from the book, or even better – interject with your own thoughts and questions! Bring up anything you wish to discuss about the novel.
- Did you enjoy The Book Thief? What did you like most about the story? What did you like least?
- Discuss the symbolism of Death as the omniscient narrator of the novel. Do you feel that death was the best choice as a narrator for this book?
- What is ironic about Liesel’s obsession with stealing books? Did you find any other uses of irony in the novel?
- The Grave Digger’s Handbook is the first book Liesel steals. Why do you think she took the book? What – if anything – is significant about the titles of the books Liesel steals?
- What were your feelings towards the characters of Hans and Rosa Hubermann? How does Liesel’s relationship with Rosa change by the end of the novel? Did your feelings towards Rosa change over the course of the novel?
- How did you feel about Liesel and Rudy’s thievery? Did their circumstances justify their crimes?
- Guilt is a powerful emotion that can cause a person to become unhappy and despondent. How does Hans Hubermann channel his guilt into helping others?
- At what point do Liesel and Max Vandenburg become friends? How do Max and Liesel give each others lives purpose?
- What did Liesel and Max’s dreams mean? How are their dreams similar? Have you ever had any recurring dreams?
- How does Liesel and Rudy’s friendship change and grow throughout the novel? Death says that Rudy doesn’t offer his friendship “for free.” (p. 51) What does Rudy want from Liesel? Discuss Death’s statement, “The only thing worse than a boy who hates you [is] a boy who loves you.” (p. 52)
- How would you describe Liesel’s relationship with the mayor’s wife? Why do you think Mrs. Hermann invited Liesel in that first time? Why did she allow her to steal books from her?
- How does Zusak use the literary device of foreshadowing to pull the reader into the story?Do you enjoy this form of storytelling, or would you prefer the story in chronological order?
Don’t forget! Everyone who participates in our October Book Club discussion of The Book Thief will be entered to win our November book selection, Fablehaven by Brandon Mull!!
1. This book was amazing? I really loved it. I mean, it put my emotions through the wringer but that’s a good thing. I laughed, I cried, and everything in between. I wasn’t sure going into it whether I was going to enjoy. I heard the cries of how fantastic it is but the subject matter had me unsure. I grew up in Germany and I often find Holocaust stories almost too horrific to digest with any level of enjoyment. As I started the book, I was mentally preparing myself to put this book in that category. Instead I was really drawn into the story and had a hard time putting the book down.
I also wasn’t sure I was going to like the storytelling style. But I actually came to appreciate it. It added a bit of humor at places where humor was needed. Death jumping ahead at times to give us a peek of the future to come actually made the future a little easier to take. I still cried buckets at the deaths at the end but I had started preparing myself before we got there so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And, in some ways, it made other scenes more bittersweet. You wanted to reach into the book and warn Liesel of what was to come so she’d do things she kept waiting to do.
I enjoyed it as well. Liesel’s story was amazing, and all of the characters were so real. I just wanted to know more about all of them.
I wondered a few times while reading it how it would affect you having grown up in Germany.
My favorite part was Max and Liesel’s friendship. Especially the scene in the street during the ‘parade’. I know it had a tragic ending, but for those few moments they were so consumed with each other that they forgot everything. Very powerful. And the mayor and his wife showing up for Leisel at the end was really nice. I was so surprised I burst into tears!
The scene between Max and Liesl during the parade is definitely one of the strongest in the book. It is very vividly written (I felt like I was there) and the emotion comprised in it brought tears to my eyes (while at the same time being quite afraid that something really bad would happen to Liesl due to her insistence).
One other such powerful scene is for me the one at the end when Liesl discovers she is the only one left alive on her street and every step shows her another casualty and loss. Truly heartwrenching, especially as I myself was also quite attached to most of those people.
2. Like I said, I wasn’t too sure at first but I do think it was appropriate. I mean, at that time in that place, Death truly was the only thing that was omniscient. It was as much a part of Germany as the people living there. In that way, it felt very right that it have a voice in this book. And because Death sees death every second of every day, it did allow the narrator to be almost above the emotional impact of what was happening. Which worked to give us a distance from that as well.
Plus, it was just about the only way we’d be able to pull back and see things from afar. I’m not sure it’d have made sense to see stuff in Russia or even what was happening with Hans after he left if we hadn’t had that omniscient narrator in place.
Err, I should clarify. By “worked to give us a distance” I didn’t mean that we were distant from the events happening to our characters. Just that we could think about what was happening to everyone in the country at that time from a distance. Having to focus on the horror of the times as well as what was happening to our characters would have been almost too much. If that makes any sense at all!
I was kind of thrown by the narrator at first. I was having a hard time adjusting to a fantasy type character telling me a non-fantasy story, but as you said Death truly was the only thing that was omniscient at that time. It would have been hard to get the full scope of the tale from the viewpoint of someone who had just picked up Liesel’s book.
1) I hope this doesn’t seem like a shameless plug but I will link to my review because I have listed there the things that I liked (many) and the things I didn’t like (none):
http://www.kaysbookshelf.com/2009/10/the-book-thief-by-markus-zusak/
2) For me the main characteristic of Death was the fact that it knew how it will all end, and never let the reader forget it. Everything feels more unavoidable when Death tells us it will happen, does it not? Plus it also made war and loss of human lives feel more pregnant, more intense — at least for me.
I’ll have to think more about the rest, will be back later
Great review Kay.
You’re right about Death making the outcome seem unavoidable. Sometimes with foreshadowing, you hope that you’ve heard the worst but that something better will transpire in the end. But when Death is the narrator, there’s a feeling of certainty.
I thought that Death was such a great narrator. It was written so well that at times I forgot it was Death who was narrating. There was a part when “the narrator” describes jumping into a car and getting on the man’s back and for a moment I was thinking, “who is on his back?” Then I remembered – it was death.
We read this as a bookclub I think it was earlier this year and I really enjoyed this book! I think the narrator being death was brilliant!
Taking question 11 about the mayors wife. I think they helped each other. The mayors wife wanted someone so desperately to use the library, I think to share her time with and maybe be helpful to someone young after losing her own child. For Liesel, the mayors wife is an important character, she feeds her need to learn to read to know.
My favorite part of this book if the story that Max wrote for Liesel. I thought it was beautiful and I love the “word Shakers” he describes in the book. Because of that story, the new online book club I have going on at my blog is names Word Shakers.
I dont always like foreshadowing but in this book it works.
Great thoughts about the mayor’s wife motivations! My thoughts on that were simply that she had noticed the book hungry girl (and very poor at the same time so she couldn’t afford any books on her own) and, since the library was there and unused she simply let Liesl partake in the literary riches there. It makes a lot more sense the way you said it
At first I think the Mayor’s wife just felt sorry for Liesel. I’m sure it must have been hard to watch her show up for the laundry again and again knowing how little she had when they had so much. Then realizing that she was desperate enough to risk so much by pulling a burning book out of a fire, she probably realized that she had a way to help her without actually giving her handouts.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized what Shelia stated – that the mayor’s wife desperately wanted someone to use the library. Almost as if it was honouring her sons memory by not letting this treasure that she had built for him go to waste.
I think the Mayor’s wife also helped Liesel to become a better person. She was one of the few people that Liesel went out of her way to make amends to when she wronged her. I felt like Liesel would have avoided those hard situations if it were someone else she had to apologize to.
What really struck me about their relationship was that even though they rarely talked, the time they spent together really made ALL the difference in both their lives. Without what they gave each other, both their existences would have been quite a bit bleaker.
3. I guess Liesel’s book stealing was ironic because all the books she stole were discarded or would have been happily given to her. Is it really stealing if you’re taking something someone else has discarded or wants to give to you?
Also the fact that Max got sick and almost died due to what was ultimately one of their happiest days playing with the snow in the basement.
A few more (random) ones:
12) I for one have loved the foreshadowing part. First of all because it was new to me in a way, and then because the motivation attached to it: Death stating in an offhand manner how bored he is with actual events and outcomes, and how he only finds interesting the way things got there. Knowing the ending made me somehow become more emotionally attached to everything in the book (perhaps because I was actually paying more attention to the journey rather than the destination, as they say). For example knowing that Rudy will die made me treasure the moments with him a bit more than I would have otherwise (plus I kept expecting all sorts of catastrophes to happen to him but that is a side effect
).
Kay, you triggered a memory here on I think it was Leisel’s dad when he had died and the soul looked as though it had jumped out of the body, eager to move on. That was an incredible visual moment!
At first I was annoyed by the foreshadowing. I’m a spoiler-phobe… I often don’t even read the book jackets because I like to be completely surprised. So the first few times the foreshadowing was used, it bothered me. But as we got further into the story, the foreshadowing became like like a shock buffer. As Death doled out little details, it really helped to prepare you for the shock of what was coming without taking too much away.
9) I was quite fond of Max’s recurring dream at the time.
I see it as a manifestation of his knowledge that the system (Hitler) is bad and it needs to be taken down (beaten up). Max knows that he is alone in this quest so he single-handedly tries to defeat Hitler/the system, and the outcome is quite predictable since there are so many of them and he is just one (it’s lucky for him this is the outcome he dreams, who knows what he might have done had he thought he could destroy Hitler by himself).
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4. I didn’t notice it until the very end, but each of the sections of the book are titled the same as the book that she steals in that section. So the books seem to mark or reflect the different stages in Liesel’s life.
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