As I type this, my eyes are itchy after crying and I feel triumphant for being able to finish The Book Thief on time for the discussions. =) Exactly three o'clock of March 26, 2009. It wasn't deliberate though. I knew I was behind schedule. And so after work... after dinner at home... after a spontaneous outburst in the dining table that there's time to go to the spa... after returning home with dad after a facial, I plop to my bed and started reading. Did I mention that outside it was raining so hard? And the cool wind blew through the big windows...? and only the lamps were on...? and the bedsheets smelled like Downy...? and the trusty cotton shirt I'm wearing is cool on my skin...? and I was in the thick of reading a good book within a good book, and--- You get the picture! Oh that a fellow bibliophile can only understand that simple pleasure! Anyways, back to the rain. Yup, it seemed more like July than March last night. But I am grateful for the evening shower. It was such an appropriate backdrop to a helluva good read. =)
Oh but I remember, yep, I read a book by John Stefanidis first... Right. It was a birthday gift from Rach last year, because I told her I wanted a book on interior design. It had been sitting on my cabinet for the last couple of months until tonight. I just had this urge to read it before The Book Thief, so I did.
Come 12 midnight I told John goodbye and said hullo back to Death: the grimly narrator for this month's book of choice.
Death is not so much frightening. I actually think he's sensitive and overly careful. He is preemptive and he spares me the details of gruesome crossovers. I like how he can identify a soul that recognizes his presence and sits upright to welcome him without fear or trepidation. Like Hans Hubermann and Leisel Meminger. Page 531-532 when there was an air raid :
Lastly, the Hubermanns.
Hans.
Papa.
He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me.
Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, "I know who you
are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come."
Talking about Hans, I picture him looking like the tall Englishman in Babe and Rosa Hubermann, the Englishman's stout wife. Leisel, I don't know. I cannot picture her looking like anybody I know. Even a celebrity. Hm...
Rudy is... I think, the epitomy of Germany's superior race. Hair the color of lemons and blue blue eyes. Only he's poor. And he dies without ever tasting a kiss from Leisel.
Max Vandenburg for me is Ethan in Survivor Africa. I love Ethan. Therefore I love Max.=) I loved the two books he wrote for Leisel, and I love how the sketchbooks were illustrated in the book. I was eating the edge of my pillow to prevent myself from crying buckets when it came to the parade of the Jews and Max was there. And when Leisel made her way to Max. I cried noisily when Rudy, Hans, Rosa and the whole of Himmel Street was wiped out. And Death carried their souls away.
Lastly, I like how Markus Zusak, the author, makes it out like I actually have in my hands, something that a little girl from Nazi Germany wrote. I feel like I also just happened to stumble upon this book. Nearly at the end of the book, akala ko nga si Leisel eventually becomes Death itself eh. I dunno, maybe I got that wrong... But it's worthwhile to think about din.
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