The Dark Room, by Rachel Seiffert

The Dark Room is comprised of three novellas joined by setting and theme, but with completely different characters (I’m not really impressed when something touted as a novel contains three lengthy short stories, but that’s just a personal hang-up). The first part, “Helmut”, tells the story of a young photographer’s apprentice in Germany during World [...]

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10 reasons to read The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

10.  Death is the narrator, and if anyone (thing? entity?) can reflect, and reflect accurately, objectively, but strangely still very touchingly on the state of humanity, it’s Death.    
9.  There are 2 or 3 other stories/books within this book.  This, in high-faluting lingo, is called intertextuality.  In economic lingo, it would be called more bang for your literary buck.  [...]

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