All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

 All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr | 531 Pages

Marie-Laure went blind at age 6. She lives in Paris with her father, spending her days at the Museum of Natural History, where he guides her into independence with a miniature model of the city she "reads" like her braille books.

Werner is a German orphan, living at the mouth of the coal mines that took his father and will take him in the future. As he grows, his brilliant mind for radios offers him a way out... into the Third Reich. 

The plot jumps back and forth from Marie and Werner's growing up years to World War 2, culminating at the siege on the French city of Saint-Malo which is the one day their paths cross.

Doerr has a way with words and images. It's very descriptive; many lines are sticking with me to ponder even days after finishing the book. You can tell he took 10 years to craft this literary gem and layer together all the elements of it. Some people may dislike the sympathetic approach to Nazi characters, but I appreciate the humanity and take it as a warning - we all have choices every day. "Don't you want to be alive before you die?"

Read for our June meeting of the Anything Goes Book Club

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson

336 pages

★★★★

When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat.

To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books, and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upend everything. 

Maggie will have to decide what's more important: the books that formed a small town's history, or the stories poised to change it all.

 

Library Mascot Cage Fight by Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum

Library Mascot Cage Match by Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum - 120 pages
Book Club by Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum - 120 pages

The adventures at Mallville Public Library continue for librarians Mel, Dewey, Tamara, Colleen, and Buddy the Beaver.

Two more collections of the Unshelved comics.  I'm enjoying reading these comics.