Seeing this issue in my inbox seems so serendipitous, because The Book Thief and All The Light We Cannot See are two of my favourite books OF ALL TIME. I mean, I've spent so many hours just analysing every word and sentence.
Zusak's writing is so powerful because he gets you to imagine things that you wouldn't otherwise. I'm dropping some of my best lines from my book highlights below:
"once the crowd of children scattered, she was caught inside a mess of uniforms and high-pitched words. " - Who knows what a mess of high-pitched words even looks like?
" Rudy and Mama sat silently, scaredly, as did Liesel. There was the smell of pea soup, something burning, and confrontation" - Again, what is the smell of confrontation? Here, Zusak forces us to imagine what that must be like.
[When Liesel sees the mound of burning books] "The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences." - I love the last line here. It so vividly captures what the scene must have been like, yet it has a poetic undertone to it.
As for All The Light We Cannot See, I find that the reason the book is so powerful is because he doesn't entwine Werner and Marie-Laure's story as if they were destined to meet and be together or something. He spends 70% of the book just building their two trajectories, and then he makes the characters meet for just a few scenes. By not making it a fantastical meet-up, Doerr made the story a lot more believable.
Towards the end of the book, he describes radio waves in a manner that is so magical and yet, entirely believable. It shows us what a great marvel the radio really is. Often, in our world of smartphones and internet, we forget how crazy this all is. I'm dropping that quote below (it is really large)
- "Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of television programs, of e-mail, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I’m going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscapes we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it."
I'll stop there. I can't just talk about these books forever!
“Because, why would I spend my time deleting and rewriting sentences that start with a conjunction when I could be writing a story narrated by Death itself?” -- exactly. Beautiful, Grace. Love how you could distill writing in three (highly appropriate) attributes. That’s it. Anything else is a corollary of one of these three. This is perfect. :)
I feel ashamed for not loving to read until after college so Im making up for lost time. But I created a page on my substack called book notes with my favorites. Hope more people do this because its a wonderful way to get to know someone.
Everything I could possibly say has been captured below, but beyond clicking the little red heart, I want you to know how much I enjoyed this piece. I often get asked the same question and feel I need to respond with an answer that fits the box of "creative non-fiction" or "fiction" or "essay style". This piece challenges me to find an answer that captures the qualities and experiences I am trying to elicit instead of stale categorization. Thank you for this Grace!
Toni Morrison's "Beloved", Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" and Dostoevksy's "Crime and Punishment" are each highly impactful to me, but if I had to pick one, I think that the book that changed my life - as it is also the book that I often use as a reference point - "I want to write a book like this", is Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Stunning how the narrative comes together and continues to surprise the reader, and always leaves me still feeling fully immersed in her southern atmosphere rich with humid brightness.
Okay Grace, prepare yourself for a long comment.
Seeing this issue in my inbox seems so serendipitous, because The Book Thief and All The Light We Cannot See are two of my favourite books OF ALL TIME. I mean, I've spent so many hours just analysing every word and sentence.
Zusak's writing is so powerful because he gets you to imagine things that you wouldn't otherwise. I'm dropping some of my best lines from my book highlights below:
"once the crowd of children scattered, she was caught inside a mess of uniforms and high-pitched words. " - Who knows what a mess of high-pitched words even looks like?
" Rudy and Mama sat silently, scaredly, as did Liesel. There was the smell of pea soup, something burning, and confrontation" - Again, what is the smell of confrontation? Here, Zusak forces us to imagine what that must be like.
[When Liesel sees the mound of burning books] "The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences." - I love the last line here. It so vividly captures what the scene must have been like, yet it has a poetic undertone to it.
As for All The Light We Cannot See, I find that the reason the book is so powerful is because he doesn't entwine Werner and Marie-Laure's story as if they were destined to meet and be together or something. He spends 70% of the book just building their two trajectories, and then he makes the characters meet for just a few scenes. By not making it a fantastical meet-up, Doerr made the story a lot more believable.
Towards the end of the book, he describes radio waves in a manner that is so magical and yet, entirely believable. It shows us what a great marvel the radio really is. Often, in our world of smartphones and internet, we forget how crazy this all is. I'm dropping that quote below (it is really large)
- "Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of television programs, of e-mail, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I’m going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscapes we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it."
I'll stop there. I can't just talk about these books forever!
Awesome. I’ve never heard of these books. I’m guessing you recommend them eh?
“Because, why would I spend my time deleting and rewriting sentences that start with a conjunction when I could be writing a story narrated by Death itself?” -- exactly. Beautiful, Grace. Love how you could distill writing in three (highly appropriate) attributes. That’s it. Anything else is a corollary of one of these three. This is perfect. :)
I like how you’ve found beauty in chaos and ugliness. This was an impressive essay.
"The most lawless, chaotic, ugliest novels you’ve ever read."
Perhaps any author's journey only really begins once they come up with their own unique definition of beauty.
I really like yours.
I feel ashamed for not loving to read until after college so Im making up for lost time. But I created a page on my substack called book notes with my favorites. Hope more people do this because its a wonderful way to get to know someone.
https://armankho.substack.com/p/book-notes
Everything I could possibly say has been captured below, but beyond clicking the little red heart, I want you to know how much I enjoyed this piece. I often get asked the same question and feel I need to respond with an answer that fits the box of "creative non-fiction" or "fiction" or "essay style". This piece challenges me to find an answer that captures the qualities and experiences I am trying to elicit instead of stale categorization. Thank you for this Grace!
Toni Morrison's "Beloved", Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" and Dostoevksy's "Crime and Punishment" are each highly impactful to me, but if I had to pick one, I think that the book that changed my life - as it is also the book that I often use as a reference point - "I want to write a book like this", is Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Stunning how the narrative comes together and continues to surprise the reader, and always leaves me still feeling fully immersed in her southern atmosphere rich with humid brightness.