More on Book Thievery

I just put on my glasses-- as if that will make me a better writer.

Unfortunately aesthetic things like that won't, reading more books and attempting to write more however,
could be a real key to success, or something like it. I've put some more devotion into The Book Thief; I feel as though that is what it deserves, devotion.

I am realizing just how much I have been coming attached to this book. I was explaining to my lovely roommate, Miche, as she joined me on the front porch, how much love I have grown for it in the past 3 or so years.

I explained to her my first encounter, reading the prologue, simply two and a half pages, after picking it up off of a coffee table in a host home. How I eagerly absorbed each sentence, not believing they could each be so full. Maybe it wouldn't be a book for everyone, but it was a book for me. As I explained I looked down at a little picture of two flowers in colourful pencil crayon, a gift-turned-bookmark from a little girl in Sault Ste Marie and a tattered airline napkin of United Airlines that I must of needed to save my place while flying too or from Dallas, Texas two summers ago for a friends wedding. I told her of my need to find it after crossing the country and searching a small bookstore in the town of High River, Alberta. I can't remember though if they had it or not or if I picked it up in a Chapters shortly after. In some place and on a fateful day after months of thinking about it, The Book Thief was there, existing, in my hands.



Two moves and one province to the right, I am finally on the urge of finishing it, I think it was waiting for me. Still I'm only about three quarters of the way, but as I read I know I am becoming very attached to the characters! How could I not, they have been with me for years, and really they are such pure characters that you simply have too fall in love with no matter their affinity for stealing or defying not only rules, but odds. In Nazi Germany, no less.


This book is deepening my urge to write and I feel very grateful. Being with me so long, it makes me feel more like myself each time I pick it up. A book is such a gift and this book has most assuredly been a gift to my life.

Maybe I would do well to draw out books longer, keeping the characters with me as I draw up my own storyline and learn to savour each sentence of days and the paragraphs of years.

I'm grateful, like I said, that this book will be accompanying me as I approach my own next chapter, and I am filled with excitement.