Picks of the Week

I read a great book. It's called The Book Thief and you should read it. Here's a brief synopsis....

"The Book Thief is a 2005 best-selling novel by Markus Zusak, and a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book. As of April 2009 it has been on the New York Times Children's Best Seller list. Although American publisher Knopf has marketed the nearly 600-page book set in Nazi Germany as a young-adult novel, it was originally intended and published in Zusak's native Australia specifically for adults. The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1939, it focuses on a German girl, Liesel, who is sent by her mother to live with foster parents in a small town near Munich. As Liesel learns to cope with her new environment, all the pains she has endured, and the extreme unhappiness of pre-war and wartime Germany, she yearns to escape via reading. Her foster father Hans helps her learn to read, and Liesel finds books here and there — in a snowy graveyard, in a Nazi book-burning, and inside the local mayor's house. She has a few friends; first her neighbor and classmate, Rudy, and later the son of a soldier her foster father knew in WWI, Max, a Jew whom her new family must hide in their basement. While the toll of WWII, Allied bombing, and Nazi brutality increases, Liesel's world starts to crumble, but words and reading sustain her."

The thing I loved the most is the poetics of the writing. Zusak adds little one or two sentence bolded lines that give hints or specific details. His descriptions are amazing. Yet it's an easy book to read. It was in the young adult section and yet is very much an adult book.

I also saw a great movie called Up. Here is a brief plot summary......

"A young Carl Fredrickson meets a young adventure spirited girl named Ellie. They both dream of going to a Lost Land in South America. 70 years later, Ellie has died. Carl remembers the promise he made to her. Then, when he inadvertently hits a construction worker, he is forced to go to a retirement home. But before they can take him, he and his house fly away. However he has a stowaway aboard. An 8 year old boy named Russell, whose trying to get an assisting the elderly badge. Together, they embark in an adventure, where they encounter talking dogs, an evil villain and a rare bird named Kevin."

This movie may be rated G but it's really for adults. You will love it and the first seven minutes will make you cry. Not sob, just sniff a few times and brush away a single tear from your eye that is watering because you are allergic to something in the theater.

I have no music recommendations. I can only say that my son is playing 3 Doors Down and Nickelback non-stop and today I finally had to turn on the news in the car and say "Do NOT TOUCH MY RADIO" when we drove to Target. I need to expand my music horizons as I've really let things slip. I guess I could advise listening to Counting Crows, August and Everything After again. I still think that's worthy. And Jethro Tull's Aqualung is never a wrong choice.

There. Picks of the week. Read the book.