The Book Thief

Is there a book version of "Oscar bait?" Well, if there is one, this one has that quality. Nazis. Adorable children. Jews in basements. Death and destruction. The Book Thief is about a little girl, adopted by loving parents in a poor neighborhood outside of Munich. The parents, even though they curse like sailors for some reason, are secretly awesome and hate the Nazis! They aren't totally anti-Semitic!  The Grim Reaper is our narrator so that's in there. Anyway, despite these issues, it's a pretty good book. I can see where someone would LOVE it. But I don't like a book that's too emotionally heavy handed and this one walks a knife-edge.

I recently watched the movie Grave of the Fireflies which has some marked similarities to this book. That animated movie is about orphaned Japanese kids during the war. This book isn't quite that sad.  On the Moh's scale of sadness this is more like an amethyst level of sadness.  Both that movie and this book make you hungry. I am now on a diet. Thanks a lot war-time starvation stories....nom, better eat these cookies, nom, never know when a bomb will hit, nom....ice cream, nom, good, nom, better eat that pizza, nom, I mean children are starving, nom....well, you get the picture. If any enemy ever had to try to starve Americans into submission....well, good luck, because my back fat alone could keep me alive for months. It's very patriotic of me to be starvation resistant. I'm a true American hero. So many of us are.

With rationing and all there is not a whole lot of drinking going on except our girl gets a taste of champagne one day: Drink with this champagne cocktail called the Parasol: 1/2 ounce Lillet Blanc, 1/2 ounce St. Germain, 1/2 ounce honey syrup (like simple syrup but honey), 3/4 ounce lemon juice. Add these to a shaker with ice, shake and strain into a champagne flute.  Top with three ounces of champagne. Be glad you don't have to scramble into a neighborhood shelter. The neighbors' terror-farts alone would kill me.