Is there anyone else on here who didn't love The Book Thief?

[TunipTheVegedude]

I was told to persevere with it and I'm now 63% through and it's annoying me more than ever.
I'm finding it pretentious and dull and while some of the characters are fine, the girl is totally unconvincing - she reads like someone has sat down and decided on some interesting characteristics to give her ('I know! I'll make her good at fighting and football!') rather than the character growing naturally.
Is it going to get better in the last 37%?

I loved it, but then as a single Mum on benefits, what would I know.

Mind you, it did make a change from my usual reading, the Sun. (Paper, rather than the large hot thing in the sky)

I thought it was a beautiful book. I read it a few years ago. Thoughtful and graceful in my opinion.

I hated it - don't know why - but I didn't finish it and I never don't finish a book.

I liked the foster mother, she is very like my mil

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I don't think I'd read it again.

I loved it ,but I'm not really a big reader and tend to dislike things other people like ( curious incident of the dog for example) . Now Cloud Atlas I gave up on after the first few pages .

Loathed it. Ugh.

I didn't like it. I particularly disliked the conceit of using Death as a character.

Never been able to get past third chapter or so and I've tried a few times. Have given up now!

I've picked it up a few times but have never got past the first two or three pages. I kept giving up because I didn't understand it.

I enjoyed it but I'm not entirely sure I understood it completely.

Rather nicely, I actually "stole" the book from the supply in out holiday villa a couple of years back :) I did leave several of mine behind though.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about books taking that sort of mythic approach to the Holocaust.
The conceit of Death taking the people makes the whole thing feel inevitable and takes away some of the sense of human responsibility for what happened. It's oddly cozy and morally I'm afraid it might be a bit of a cop-out.

I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I felt the need to finish it, but wasn't that bothered.

I didn't mind it, but there are many better books out there that address the holocaust using mythic tropes - Jane Yolen's novel Briar Rose and short story Sister Death, for example.

Thanks for the tip, Uptheairymountain

I thought it was quite meh. I read it a year or two ago and I don't really remember it much at all.

I loved it, I guess I just bought into the magical realism and the way the girl was emotionally stunted, forced to just survive. A lot of it is portrait of ordinary poor Germans caught up on an ideological maelstorm they can't see objectively. Interviews with the author are good, too.

If you don't like, just move on quickly! Something like The Woman in White would be dull & turgid to me. Isn't it great we're all different & like different things?

I'm 82% through now. I'm going to skim the rest.

I love The Woman In White

I read it,quite enjoyed it then re-read it for a book group a couple of years later. The second time,I loved it.

The Woman in White is fabulous, certainly knocks the Woman in Black into a cocked hat.

"I think you either get it or you don't. "

What is sad is that you call yourself a Professor of English Literature but are unable to explain what you feel has gone "over our heads" in a book written for teenagers fgs

I hope your students get slightly more intellectual replies from you in class than "either you get it or you don't".

I'm not sure BOF still teaches students formally, I think she's in one of those very senior posts where she just sits on funding councils, runs her department and gets loads of study leave.

How dare you?

I learned everything I know at BOF's knee.

Or, you know, the professorly equivalent of knees.

I couldn't get past the first paragraph

Intensely irritating and twee