The beginning of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is one of heartbreak and despair. It’s January 1939 and we’re on a train that’s on its way to Munich. We’re traveling with a 9-year-old girl, her mother, and her younger brother. All of them are cold, sick, and hungry. The mother is bringing her children to a foster family in Munich in the hope it will give them a chance at a better life.
Unfortunately, the boy never makes it. He dies on the train.

The family is taken off the train at the next town by two guards. Two days later, the boy is buried there. It’s where the book thief steals her first book. It’s her most prized possession, even if she can’t read. Even if the book is a grave digger’s handbook.
After the funeral, the girl and her mother continue on the journey to Munich, where Liesel Meminger meets Rosa and Hans Hubermann, her foster parents.

The narrator of the book is Death. I don’t mean that the narrator died. The narrator is Death itself. Death was never far away in those years, so it’s quite convenient to have him narrate the book. He was there anyway. His unusual point of view gives the book and the story something special.

After the painful start, you expect the entire book to be full of heartbreak. That’s not the case. A significant part of the book is about learning to read, being a family, making friends, accordions, helping those who need help and making more friends.
I did read most of it with my teeth clenched, expecting the world to end any moment now. It meant that I had to pace myself through the book.

The book is beautifully written. But in the end, the world does end. Most of it anyway. The second to last chapter made me cry the most. It also felt awfully short. I wanted to read much more about it.
I wish I had known Liesel and Hans Hubermann and Max. They were able to create joy and beauty under terrible circumstances. They defied the harshness of the world around them and continued to be kind, to love music and reading and life. And they shared these gifts with others where and when they could. They gave hope in a hopeless time.

I just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower for the first time, I hadn’t seen the film either.
The book is about 15-year old Charlie, who we get to know through his letters to an anonymous friend. The target audience of the book is probably young adults and not 40-year old’s but I enjoyed reading it.
It’s very different from most books and it kept surprising me until the very end.

Charlie is a bit different from most kids at his school but I felt he was easy to empathize with. Charlie struggles to make friends and has no idea how to connect with other people, let alone fit in.
His English teacher Bill encourages him to “participate” more. And as Charlie tries to please everyone around him he does try to participate.
While he doesn’t interact with his classmates and peers much, he does become friends with a group of seniors. At times he almost comes across as well-adjusted but internally Charlie still suffers. He doesn’t talk about his problems. He turns to alcohol and drugs to take the edge of his feelings. He chooses alcohol and drugs because it means he doesn’t have to bother anyone else with his problems.

Towards the end of the book, Charlie’s friend Sam tells him to stop trying to please everyone else and to say and do what he wants and needs. To me, this was the most touching part of the book. It made me realize that it’s a fine balance to find between trying to please everyone and forgetting about your own needs and being egocentric and only seeing things from your point of view.
We see plenty of the latter around us. Characterized by a lack of empathy and sometimes (like when people are protesting for the end of lockdowns) by a lack of intelligence. We don’t hear so much about people-pleasing others to the point where they forget about themselves. It’s not as visible and it’s usually silent.

I often lean towards the pleasing side. I don’t like conflict and I have an abundance of empathy. This makes it easy to find excuses for people’s inconsiderate behavior. For long stretches of time, the approach seems to work well until the pressure of small annoyances and not standing up for myself builds up too far. At that point, it has to come out and because it has been building it doesn’t always come out in a well thought through and moderate way.
Like Charlie, I should speak up more often.

All the working from home these days creates an interesting opportunity for experimenting. Because so many variables have become fixed it’s easier to consciously tweak the ones that are still flexible.
During the first weeks of lockdown, I felt confused and shocked, like most people I think. Once I had gotten used to it I was a bit ashamed to feel excited and happy. No commute means a lot more time to do other things. Without distractions during the day I can work very efficiently. Not having any events and dinners means that my evenings are all mine to spend as I like. I felt like life was finally being lived on my introvert terms, creating a lot of mental space and freeing up oodles of energy that would normally go towards socializing and attending events and dinners.

For a couple of weeks, I’ve spent the extra energy on running (a lot of running) and practicing piano more often. This last week being at home and in almost complete control of what happens, things have gotten too flat. I only recognized this as I finished reading the book, although I had felt restless for a couple of days. Running is only physically challenging. I’m not good enough on the piano yet to set myself a significant challenge on it.
I miss being pushed out of my comfort zone occasionally. The best solution would be for me to challenge myself more. That way I can decide the type of challenge I want to set and how hard I want to push.

One challenge that I keep thinking about is “how to be a rebel and fight injustice like an introvert?”. I would like to convince people of the errors of their ways through rational arguments and respectful conversations and exchanges of ideas. It’s probably a utopia and it’s unlikely to happen, but I’ll think about it some more.
If you also have some time and energy on your hands I recommend reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower and letting it surprise you. Who knows what unexpected inspiration it might provide for you.

Fetch Phillips is in his early thirties, but he has lived more lives than most of us will in a lifetime.
He is by no means a traditional protagonist, but author Luke Arnold did a great job creating a character with many layers. Fetch has some admitted, significant character flaws but I found him easy to empathize with. He has a knack for making the wrong decisions or perhaps is just very unlucky in the way his decisions work out. Most likely it’s a combination of both.
I started reading The Last Smile in Sunder City at the recommendation of Tim Minchin and I recommend that you read it too. I loved this book.

Fetch is a Man for Hire. He is hired by the principal of Ridgerock Academy, a cross-species school. He is asked to find the school’s history and literature teacher Edmund Albert Rye. Rye is a vampire, but in a world where all magic has disappeared vampires are old and frail. Most vampires are languishing after the coda took their powers away. Not Rye though, he has made peace with the situation and is enjoying passing on some of his knowledge by teaching at the school and tutoring kids on the side too.

When the magic disappeared the world became bleak and dark and life became harsh. The elves named the moment the coda reasoning that the world had been singing a song since the day it was born, but that it was about to come to an end.
A very fitting name, looking at the definition of coda on Wikipedia:
“In music, a coda is a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence. It may be as simple as a few measures, or as complex as an entire section.”

Fetch tries to live a good life and feels much better when he’s helping people and generally being a good person. However, he slips up easily and often and it makes him feel bad. Feeling bad makes him drink and fight, which makes him feel even worse. He hasn’t had it easy. He has lived with heartbreak for most of his life and he has always felt like an outcast.
Fetch, like a lot of us, shows his best side in the face of adversity. We work better together when we are trying to overcome an evil that is bigger than ourselves. Unfortunately, as soon as a glimmer of hope appears we’re willing to kill each other for it.

A lot of The Last Smile in Sunder City feels like it was written as a metaphor for the situation that we are in today. Professor Rye writes:
“And thus, we enter this strange new world. A simpler world. It may not be as bright or as loud as the eons leading up to it, but this is the time that fate has chosen for us. Life once felt so grand and meaningful. This new world is hushed. … If there is a future, that’s how it will be determined. Not by winning wars or medals or fame, but by searching out into the darkness and, when you find it, holding up the light.”
It seems fitting, but the book could also be a metaphor for being human in general. It’s about our struggle to do the right thing and how to deal with feelings of disappointment and guilt when things don’t work out as we had hoped they would.

Fetch looks towards alcohol and books to allow him to escape into another world for a bit.
I, in turn, enjoyed following him around and experiencing a bit of life in Sunder City.
I’m happy to be back home now, but I’m looking forward to visiting Sunder City again in the future.
Luke Arnold has created an intricate world and he has written a marvelous book about it.