Reality check

I often worry about doing things correctly, what lessons I’m teaching my daughter unconsciously and if I can be a better parent. I’m faster at noticing the negatives than positives. I occasionally get into the complaining about everything mode. And then I’m violently pulled out of it by the reality check. This time it came in the form of a book – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The main character of the book is an orphan German girl and the action takes place in the small town in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. She has real Problems. In comparison whatever problems my family or I may have at the present moment are solvable with a bit of creative thinking; we don’t fear for our lives and have reasonable confidence in our child having comfortable and secure existence for the years to come; we don’t have to make any hard decisions; our morality isn’t tested on any big scale. Basically our lives are good, profoundly beautifully good, and I can see that easily if I stop for a second my fast chain of complaints and actually think about them.

Since I have no idea of how to write useful book reviews, I’ll just point you to the ones here. Hopefully they’ll give you a better idea of whether this book could be worth reading for you. Myself, I fall in love with the book from the first few pages and cried at the end of it, though I seem to be crying at books very easily nowadays.