MzSerena’s Garden

Sometimes, I wonder if it’s possible to declare net-ruptcy like you can declare bankruptcy. Is there anything like debt consolidation for those of us who spread ourselves too thin? I mean, there’s blogging on whatever site like Livejournal or Blogger, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook and Myspace. There’s also Friend Feed, Flickr, G-Mail and G-Talk, plus AIM, Y!M, MSN/Windows Live and even Jabber and Skype.

With all these different social media outlets, and that’s just a few listed above, how do you keep from spreading yourself too thin? Should you ‘just say no’ to the next one? I know I’d like to. Maybe we should start a revolution? Go back to E-mail being the best form of cyber communication. Think it would work?

Nah… I didn’t think so either.

Death, a sardonic and articulate character who is afraid of humans, narrates this WWII coming-of-age story about faith, love, hope amidst tragedy.

Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands.

The child arrives having just stolen her first book –- although she has not yet learned how to read -– and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when she’s roused by regular nightmares about her younger brother’s death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayor’s reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents.

Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesel’s story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.