Book Review: The Book Thief

The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak

My take: Definitely worth the read, but only if you're prepared to cry a little. (Or a lot. I bawled my way through the last thirty pages, but I am a book crier. And a movie crier. And an excellent-talk-in-church crier. Okay maybe I'm not that bad.)

The book is set in Nazi Germany, and mostly follows the exploits of a teenage girl named Liesel Meminger, who lives in a suburb of Munich. Before you think "oh another one of those," hear me out. There are two things about this book that really make it different, and make it worthy to be on that "Top Ten Books to Read This Summer" list, where I discovered it.

First. The book is narrated by Death. Cool, huh? Not the scythe-wielding, Dementor-robe-wearing, Grim Reaper Death. Death in this novel is actually very human, which I thought was an interesting take on the whole concept of personifying Death. Plus, he's an omniscient narrator, which often seems clumsy to me, but in this book, worked out very nicely. Death was able to tell you what was happening all over Europe at that point in time because, well, he was all over Europe. Plus Death, or Markus Zusak's idea of Death, provided an unusual perspective for the terrible events of that part of history. Very thought-provoking.

Second. Almost all of the characters in the book are normal German people living in a normal German town. They aren't Jews; they aren't Gestapo. They're ordinary Germans. I've always heard that Germany was responsible for the Holocaust and for WWII, so I just assumed that most of the German people were in on it. But Zusak gives readers a look into the reality of what German people thought of Hitler and his regime, and it wasn't like I believed. So it was refreshing to learn that plenty of Germany was not onboard with the Nazis; they just couldn't do anything significant to stop them.

You'll learn a lot about human nature by reading this book. Keep the tissues handy.

Meet Pepper

Pepper is our cat. Here is his story.

Pepper is of uncertain age and indeterminate breed.

Last summer, the upstairs neighbors rescued five kittens from the abandoned house next door. Two of the kittens were white, and three were black. Luckily, we'd only been married for two months, and Skyler (who is a dog person) was still in that give-my-new-bride-whatever-she-wants phase. Well this new bride wanted a kitten. (I've wanted one since I was eight, but instead of me getting a kitten, my one brother got a hamster, and when that died, my other brother got a dog. Whoever said the youngest child is spoiled has never experienced the pet politics in my family.) Also luckily, the neighbor was giving the kittens away for free, so Skyler was more inclined to be on board.

Originally, we requested a white female kitten. We got a black female kitten. She was so cute, though, that it didn't much matter. So little bitty she could fit in the palm of your hand. Ooo! (Skyler would probably remind me to mention that after the first day, I was ready to give her away. She was so tiny that I thought she would get lost in our three room apartment, so I followed her everywhere for the first four hours. It was exhausting, and I couldn't take it. And that is my best defense.)

We named her Pepper in honor of Pepper Potts, superhero assistant extraordinaire. 

And then we realized that she did not have the correct parts in her nether regions to jive with her being a her. Oops. Poor Pepper had an identity crisis at the age of (maybe) four months. And Pepper's namesake became good ole Dr. Pepper instead. Hopefully Dr. Pepper is actually a man.

So instead of that white female, we now had a black male kitten. 

Who likes to make trouble.

Like this.

Or this.

(It was supposed to be a literature paper.)

He likes to hide just about anywhere.

Including camouflaged in the laundry hamper.

Or my personal favorite, in the toilet sneak-attack position.

And he is currently sporting the ever-popular cone of shame.

Really the whole situation could have been averted if he didn't do what he did, but how do you explain that to a cat who eats his own vomit?

See, about three and half weeks ago, Pepper started spraying, as any male cat going through the cat equivalent of puberty does. That would not fly. I could have nightmares from the smell of male cat musk, it's that bad. So we got him fixed. At a clinic which apparently doesn't believe in giving cones to their patients right off the bat. Or perhaps we were too naive to ask for one. Either way, Pepper was left to his own devices after surgery. And those devices included licking a certain incision, which resulted in an infection, and suddenly there was infected cat puss on my couch cushion. Charming.

During the emergency vet visit that resulted from this discovery, Pepper was forced to endure the bad kind of temperature-taking. As if an infected bum wasn't bad enough. He gave me an 'I am going to vomit all over your pillow tonight' look that had me genuinely worried for a while.

Thankfully, he did not do that. Likely as not his cone got in the way. Though it's more of a saucer really, like Pepper's head is served up on a platter. My uncle suggested we started calling him John the Baptist. Too soon?



And that is Pepper's story. The very, very condensed version.

Darndest Things

Sometimes I feel like I'm in an episode of that show Kids Say the Darndest Things that Bill Cosby used to host way back when. I never understood it as a child; the kids weren't being funny, they were being normal. Duh. (I should've been on that show.)

Why do I feel this way? Skyler and I teach Primary every Sunday. We thought we'd gotten a really great deal when the bishopric first approached us about it: no Sunday School, no Relief Society, no Priesthood. Just two blissful hours spent singing songs and coloring with a few cherubic children who listened attentively to our well-prepared lesson. Oh, the good life!

Yeah, that fantasy ended real quickly--the minute we stepped through the door of the Primary room on our first day. The Sister in charge of new teachers tried very hard to be tactful as she informed us that our class was in need of a little extra love and guidance because a few members of our class struggled with the structure of Primary and understanding how to properly conduct themselves while at Church, and several interventions had unsuccessfully been implemented to help these young children learn how to behave appropriately, so we were the next intervention, and they had complete faith that we would do a wonderful job.

She didn't fool us. It was obvious we had the problem class.

Such a problem class, in fact, that for six four-year-olds (of which only 3-4 attend regularly), they assigned three teachers, and strictly instructed us that there must always be three teachers. NO MATTER WHAT. They thought three teachers for as many kids was necessary? Naively, we thought everyone was overreacting. How hard could it be to entertain a few pre-school-age kids for two hours?

The answer is HARD. It took me no time to understand why the other teachers give us pitying looks in the hallway, and why the Primary counselors ask how the class is going with this no-one-else-will-teach-them-so-please-don't-quit-on-us tone. Skyler and I now walk home from Church vowing to never have a four-year-old (we haven't figured out how to pull that off yet, but I'll keep you posted). And occasionally, Primary actually makes me miss the quietness of Relief Society.

But! There is a silver lining, and this is where the Darndest Things feeling comes in--those kids make the funniest comments. Here is a priceless conversation that occurred while they were all coloring during class last Sunday:

Boy 1 (picking up the white crayon): "Look! It's glue!"

Boy 2: "No, that's just a crayon."

Boy 1: "No! See it's white, and it's glue!"

Boy 2: "Well, if it's hard and not sticky, then it's a crayon. But if it's not hard, and it is sticky, then it's glue. That's hard and not sticky, so it's a crayon." (Keep up the logic, buddy. You're doing great!)

Boy 1: "But it is sticky!"

Boy 2: "I know you think that it's sticky, but it's actually not . . ." (What a tactful four-year-old!)

And my personal, all-time-favorite comment that has ever come out of the mouth of any of our Primary kids:

"I miss my mom more than any kid in the world has ever missed their mom."

Gotta love it.

Tough Love

I think my husband subscribes to the tough love philosophy.

For months (years?), he's been periodically pestering me to start my blog up again (I had a blog at one point, and it was pretty fun, but then I just . . . stopped posting). Well, it was totally impossible to use the same blog because the last time I posted anything was in October of 2010, and I couldn't just pick up where I left off. That would be so two years ago! Obviously, I had to create a new blog to signify the whole fresh-start thing before I could actually write a new post.

So I did--this one. And then every day for the next two weeks, I looked at my blog, thought Man, I really like the colors of this blog, had no idea what to write, and moved on to other things. Until tonight.

Tonight, I pulled up my blog and said to my husband, "Doesn't my blog just look so pretty?"

He replied, "No. It's empty" (The conversation is paraphrased, but it was basically along these lines.)

So I said, "Oh but doesn't it just look nice? I mean, it's looks real nice, right?"

Here comes the tough love: "Well sure, but it's worthless. You haven't posted anything." Ouch.

"Well . . . but . . . I . . . splutter, splutter, splutter." He had a valid point--I had no comeback. And then he confiscated my phone until he saw an actual post on my pretty-colored blog.

So here I am. Posting.