The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

★★★★★

"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality.  But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know?  I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimated the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.  I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."

Updated: 5/7/2014

The movie is coming out, so I listed to his as an audio book this past week.  I loved it just as much as I did a few years ago and it remains one of my favorite books.  The story is subtle, yet extremely powerful.  I have always loved the character of Liesel and the connection between books and words throughout the novel.  I enjoyed listening the the audio version, but I missed a lot of the formatting and drawings that were in the print version - especially Max's stories that he wrote for Liesel.