I’m proud to say The Book Thief couldn’t pull my heartstrings

The Book Thief is based on Markus Zusak’s novel of the same name which, although written for young adults, appears beloved by many, judging from the readers’ reviews on the internet, and the frequent declarations of ‘it’s the best book I’ve ever read!’, and there is our first worrying clue, right there. Over the years, of which there have been more than enough — I am quite ready to shuffle off now — I have come to learn that when anyone declares a book ‘the best book I have ever read!’ it tends to be the only book they have ever read. If you remain unconvinced, I feel I need only refer you to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, which is basically ‘the best book I’ve ever read’ to the moon and back, even though it is such badly written trash.

So, anyway, they have made a film of ‘the best book I’ve ever read!’, which I haven’t read — after The Alchemist, I gave up on any best books that anyone had ever read — so I can’t tell you what this is like as an adaptation, but can tell you it’s not much of a film, and incredibly irritating.