Sept. meeting information is as follows,
Leader: Florence
Book: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
We split Sept. book reading into 5 parts –
Part 1 & 2 : Florence
Part 3 & 4 : Julie
Part 5 & 6 : Evelyn
Part 7 & 8 : Lydia
Part 9 & 10 : Rachel
Anyone who will join the meeting and is not on the above list can read any part or the whole book.
Date: Monday, Sept 7, 2009 Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Our study group starts at 1:00p sharp. Therefore we would assume that any orders (drinks or lunch) are taken care of before we start.
New Place: Proroyal 王牌西餐廳市府分店
Address: No. 359, Si-Wei 2nd Road, Kaohsiung City 高雄市苓雅區四維二路359號
Tel: 07-3354466
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
Leader: Florence
Book: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
We split Sept. book reading into 5 parts –
Part 1 & 2 : Florence
Part 3 & 4 : Julie
Part 5 & 6 : Evelyn
Part 7 & 8 : Lydia
Part 9 & 10 : Rachel
Anyone who will join the meeting and is not on the above list can read any part or the whole book.
Date: Monday, Sept 7, 2009 Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Our study group starts at 1:00p sharp. Therefore we would assume that any orders (drinks or lunch) are taken care of before we start.
New Place: Proroyal 王牌西餐廳市府分店
Address: No. 359, Si-Wei 2nd Road, Kaohsiung City 高雄市苓雅區四維二路359號
Tel: 07-3354466
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
The Book Thief is a 2005 best-selling novel by Markus Zusak, and a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book.[1] 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.[2]
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.
Plot summary-
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.
Plot summary-The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany on Himmel Street, before and during World War II. The story is told from the point of view of Death, a reluctant collector of souls, who does not enjoy the job appointed to him. One of the few pleasures he has is in the story of the book thief, Liesel Meminger. Liesel's story begins when she and her brother are sent away by their mother to the Hubermanns, a foster family, as she, a "Kommunist" (Communist) is sent to Dachau Concentration Camp. However, on the way to the Hubermanns, Liesel's brother Werner dies. As the gravediggers are burying her brother, Liesel takes the gravedigger's handbook, despite her inability to read. She later arrives at the Hubermann's house on Himmel Street in Molching and meets her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, who treat her well, despite Rosa's infamous swearing. Liesel then meets Rudy Steiner, a neighbour of her own age who later becomes her best friend. Rudy is well known for his impersonation of the African-American athlete Jesse Owens. He makes no attempt to hide his crush on Liesel (he always requests a kiss from her at the most opportune moments, despite constant refusal. However, at one point she is about to give in, but he does not accept.) Eventually Hans Hubermann takes in a Jewish refugee, Max Vandenburg, and lets him stay in the Hubermanns' basement because Max's father saved Hans's life during World War I, an event which led him to question the reasoning behind the Jewish persecution (and left him in possession of Max's deceased father's accordion). Max becomes Liesel's close friend, and he chronicles the experience in a series of sketches, as well as two homemade books for Liesel. All of Max's books are made by painting over the words in a copy of Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf. However, because Hans helped another Jew as he was being marched to a nearby camp, Max is forced to leave, fearing that the Hubermann's house will be searched by Nazi SS.
Meanwhile, World War II is creeping closer to Himmel Street, bringing death to the area. The Nazi Party asks the Steiner family for Rudy in order to send him to a Nazi training program and then later on to war, but when the Steiners refuse, Rudy's father Alex is sent away as punishment. At the same time, after hearing about the very thorough medicals Rudy was forced to go through, Liesel starts to develop fantasies of him naked. Hans is also sent away; he survives his brief draft into the army and returns, but one soldier, the son of one of Liesel's neighbors, commits suicide because he felt he should have died with his brother. Shortly after an air raid, an Allied plane crashes just outside the town, and Liesel and Rudy are with the pilot as he dies, giving him a teddy bear to ease his passage. This is Death's second encounter with Liesel. The threat of an air raid increases by the day, and during drills the neighbourhood gathers in basements of "adequate depth" for protection. Here, Liesel becomes more aware of the power of words as she reads aloud to her neighbours and family to calm them. However, one day, the alarms are too late. All the citizens of Himmel Street except for Liesel are killed in a late night bombing. She survives because she is writing her life story in the Hubermanns' basement (which had previously been deemed unsuitable as a bomb shelter) when the bombs crash. Liesel is overcome by grief at the deaths of her family and friends, and loss of the only happiness she had ever known. She sees both her parents' corpses as well as Rudy's. As a final goodbye, she gives Rudy the kiss he had asked for throughout their entire friendship, as well as admitting her love for him. This is her third encounter with Death, who picks up her discarded autobiography, bringing him new perspective on the life of this strange girl. Liesel is then taken in by the Mayor and his wife, whom Liesel had befriended during her many laundry rounds.
Miraculously, Max survives the concentration camps and is reunited with Liesel several years later, who is working in Alex Steiner's shop after he also ironically survives the war. The story ends with Liesel's death as an old woman, living with her family in Sydney . Death questions her about her life, showing her the long discarded autobiography, and comments that he is "haunted by humans".
