I first found my favorite book in my neighbor’s house when I was dog sitting for them. I was waiting in the dimly lit front room for my friend to come and pick me up, and I was bored out of my mind. I’d finished all the things that I’d been asked to do and had forgotten the book that I had been reading at home, as I was prone to do. I decided to just start wandering the house, looking for anything I could do to pass those few minutes, and found a book lying on a small table. I picked it up and looked at the cover, not expecting to find the story that interesting; the front looked dull and unexciting, and the summary to me sounded just the same. The only thing I found interesting was its title. “The Book Thief” intrigued me, if only in an ironic sort of way, because it was a book written about someone who steals them. So I opened it and skimmed a few pages, trying to find out whether I’d like it or not.
When I actually started reading, I was kind of stunned at how it started. At that point in my life, I wasn’t too familiar with adult literature; I’d mostly read young adult novels, being in my second year of high school. I wasn’t interested in the sort of stories that were targeted at people older than me. From what I’d seen of the books my mother read, they were boring and full of things I didn’t really comprehend. So I stuck to books like Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series, novels that were in the fantasy genre rather than period pieces, books that I viewed as “kid-friendly.” I read things that were nothing like those “awfully dreadful stories” about history. I thought they wouldn’t appeal to me because they were so different from what I was used to. But this book, though it started out with a death, was narrated in such a unique and creative way that I wanted to keep reading.
I had sat down in this olive green chair to begin the novel, my body sideways with my feet hanging over the armrest, swinging free in the air. Not the best position to be in when I felt my phone buzz with a text message. My friend, Blaine, was outside and had been for several minutes. I was so engrossed in the story that I’d lost track of time and hadn’t even noticed my phone trying to alert me to my negligence. I put the book back on the table nest to the kitchen door, grabbed my backpack, and ran to the alarm system to arm it, and out the door, stopping to lock everything up and then I was on my way to the car and, ultimately, school.
All day in class, my mind was on other things. Mainly, the book and where the plot was going. I was hooked and could not focus on anything else. I was watching the clock, waiting until school was over so I could get back home, drop off all of my school stuff, and head back into my neighbor’s house so I could read the book. But of course, that was the day my mother decided that the chores had to be done, so I was stuck at home for a few more hours. By the time I could go over, it was too late to read any of it. So I left it behind and forgot about it, spending my time reading the novel that I had already started. The next day, I got up, got ready for school, and walked over to their house, already tired of the dogs that I was caring for. I dreaded the mornings because the dogs never listened to me. But after I opened the door and walked into the house, disarmed the alarm, and turned towards the kitchen, I saw the book again. I was determined to get in some reading time, so I quickly fed the dogs and got them outside, even though i had to practically drag them both out one at a time. I had only a few precious minutes, so I quickly got to work trying to find the page that I had left off on. In all the excitement of the previous day I had forgotten to mark it in some manner. I found it and began to read, careful this time to keep my phone visible so that I would leave on time. Yet again, I had to leave too soon, and yet again was not able to read after school as the homework was piling up. It’s not like it hadn’t occurred to me to just take the book and give it back later; I was more afraid of the thought that I would be taking something that did not belong to me without express permission. Eventually, however, I did just take the book. I was too caught up in it to leave it behind yet another time.
Before I started reading this book, I had never faced any “challenges” concerning my reading. Everything came easy to me; I had books at my disposal and the time to read them. Also, before this, books that I decided to read were ones I knew and liked. I had never really tried to read books and novels that were outside of my comfort zone. I chose things that were easy and that I knew I liked. “The Book Thief” was pretty much the very first book that I chose to read that was outside of that comfort zone, something that was new and unexpected. It was a sort of last choice thing, a book that I would never had picked up had it not been for these very specific circumstances. It’s the book that opened my eyes in regards to valuing and choosing a book not for its cover or genre, but its story. I had just been ignoring the most important part of a book in favor of staying with what I knew, what I knew I liked, what I had been reading for the past 10 years of my life. This book made me branch out into a genre I thought I would find boring and uninteresting, one that I had never considered reading before.
“The Book Thief” was my first venture into a genre I came to love, even though I had previously thought I would hate it. It was basically my gateway drug into historical fiction, and is still by far the greatest novel I have ever read. The plot, writing, setting, and characters combine in the best ways to make this book one of the most brilliant pieces of literature in contemporary fiction. It is more than just a story to me. It is a piece of prose that I really connected with emotionally and found to be really important to what I read and why. This book really made me look at myself and the reasons behind why I chose the books I did.
