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Stories set in Nazi Germany are like a bad dream that you’ve had repeatedly. You’ve had the dream so often that you have a premonition, even before you’ve realized that you’re in that dream again, that a certain array of bad things are going to show up. And they do. The flag, the speechifying man with a mustache, the soldiers, the hunger, the cold, the thousand random cruelties and small braveries. And you know how this is going to end, and you know how it’s going to get there. It’s going to walk there one heavy footstep at a time, coughing up blood. I don’t want to dream that dream again. When I find myself in that dream, I want to grab the corners of my field of vision and rip the scene down.

� And yet, I think I will finish reading The Book Thief. I like the characters so far—Liesel, the title character, who steals her first book before she can read, and the couple that take her in, and the neighbor boy who becomes her friend. I know they’re all doomed, and I may end up shutting the book at some point and waking up, if the bad dream just gets too familiar, the predestination too much. But for now, I’ll keep on going (in my slow way). Fortunately, I have several other books to escape to.

UPDATE: I didn't finish reading it; I quit reading it--but there's not an option for that, that I can see. I'll try finishing it maybe one day.