Tuesday Teaser: The Book Thief

"Many jocular comment followed, as did another onslaught of "heil Hitlering." You know, it actually makes me wonder if anyone ever lost and eye or injured a hand or wrist with all of that. You'd only need to be facing the wrong way at the wrong time or stand marginally too close to another person. Perhaps people did get injured. Personally, I can only tell you that no one died from it, or at least, not physically. There was, of course, the matter of the forty million people I picked up by the time the whole thing was finished, but that's getting all metaphoric. Allow me to return us to the fire."

I started reading this book yesterday and I have to say, I am addicted to it. It's hard to tear yourself away from a book about Nazi Germany where the narrator is Death. Seriously, Death. Never did I think that Death would have such a wry sense of humor, although I guess you'd have to, to be able to deal with that kind of work (which is how he describes it).

I figured out why I like the Tuesday Teaser so much; when I was a teacher, passages from texts were a huge part of my curriculum. As individuals and groups, my students often had to pull passages from the text and explain their significance. I spent years of my life looking for passages that contributed to thematic, symbolic or character development. I miss that. This challenge is a little tough for me, because I know I'm supposed to choose a random passage from a random page, but I admit that as I'm reading, I tend to get a passage in my mind and spend a few minutes trying to find it before I write this post. Oh well. Sue me. :-)