Book Business' The Best We Read 2012
Alexis Henderson, Director of eLearning
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (Knopf, 2007)
You may look at my pick and pass it by for a couple of reasons. One: You have to go to the “Young Adult” section to buy it (“I’m an adult! I do not read fiction written for teens!”). Or two: On the surface, it’s a story of a young girl in Nazi Germany (“Hm… sounds familiar.”). To these objections, I say: Do not be deterred. Please. This is the story of Liesel Meminger, a.k.a. “The Book Thief,” and how she came to be in Molching, Germany – living with foster parents who end up harboring a Jewish man in their basement – told from the perspective of the narrator... death. The end result is an incredibly intelligent, heart-swelling, sweep-you-away story. If you’re anything like me, you’ll laugh, cry, become hopelessly devoted to the characters, and find yourself picking this book up again and again.
- People:
- Alex Schwartz
- Annie Barrows
- Carl Zimmer
- Charles Lamb
- Christopher McDougall
- Christopher Wren
- David Foster Wallace
- David McCullough
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- James Sturdivant
- Jane Mendelsohn
- John Locke
- Juliet Ashton
- Katherine Dunn
- Mary Ann Shaffer
- Mike Cooper
- Nancy Milford
- Nate Silver
- Paco Underhill
- Robert Boyle
- Robert Hooke
- Roger Federer
- Sandor Katz
- Sean Howe
- Steve Jobs
- Thomas Willis
- Todd Andrlik
- Tommy James
- Walter Isaacson
- William Harvey
- Zelda Fitzgerald