“The Book Thief”: A Great Read

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Travis McDade’s, “The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman.” This is one book thief who will have your hair standing on end, while you clutch your books tightly to your chest (and look out for those elevator shafts while you’re at it). There are also some wonderful dramatic courtroom scenes toward the end, so don’t expect this book about librarians, rare books, sentencing guidelines, and lawyers to put you to sleep. I was horribly frazzled at the end of a long day yesterday and figured a 90 minute yoga class and an hour with The Book Thief would calm the nerves (where is a bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment when you need it! I settled for a nice Australian Port). Well, those courtroom scenes all but had me cheering and laughing out loud, so there went sleep for another hour. I highly recommend it. (The book could have used one more edit to clean up some pesky grammar and syntax problems, but I’m never hard on new writers, especially ones who tell such a great tale. These are not easy stories to tell!)

One thing that isn’t mentioned, and was probably not known at the time the book was written, is that Associate Supreme Court Justice Alito (former U.S. Court of Appeals 3rd Circuit Judge Alito) who played such a lovely role in this tale at the end, is married to a law librarian (maybe former also – but to librarians, once a librarian, always a librarian 🙂