All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.” 

                                                                               ...

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.                                                                               ...
It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.” 

                                                                               ...

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?” 

                                                                               ...

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

It took me two attempts to start reading this book. The first time I had only read the blurb and a few chapters of my kindle sample, but went no further than the first chapter - I was on the lookout for my next 'great' read that would hook me in and I wasn't in the mood for a war story. But I kept reading great reviews and saw how many of my friends rated it so highly, so then came my second, more successful, sitting to read it.

It is very beautifully written with a lot of detail, but not in an overly heavy way. It was easy for me to imagine myself walking down the cobbled streets of Saint-Malo. I loved how it was creatively crafted and flowed a little differently than I was expecting - it was still easy to follow and kept me interested. 

The thing that stuck with me the most in this story is the internal dialogue of Marie-Laure and Werner. At the end of the day they are just two kids who are caught up in a war that they don't want to be a part of, and how it was written made the story all the more real and enchanting.

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

“The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed” 

A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?

A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut of a writer of astonishing gifts.

I am so confused. I have no idea why this book has such a cult following. 

I saw the links between each of the characters in each chapter (yes, very clever and very well done) but now that I've finished the book, I still feel like I'm missing something. To be honest, the stories got harder and harder to read and enjoy the further on I got. I nearly stopped at the 75% mark, but I persisted, and now I'm left feeling like I've just wasted my time. 

So much potential but it was obviously wasted on me.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Charlie is a freshman.

And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.

Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. 

This is a hard one to summarise my feelings about - I enjoyed reading it and found myself engrossed in the characters lives, but I just can't bring myself to say I loved it. 

The characters were quirky and raw, and I loved going along with their messy teenage lives for a few days…BUT I think it was the last chapter that left a bad taste in my mouth - Talking openly about sexual abuse is important, and I know it is a sad reality for some people, but in the case of this story and this character, I didn't really understand why it all had to tie together like that. I felt as though the abuse was used as an excuse or justification as to WHY Charlie was a little different to everyone else. I would have much preferred him to own his idiosyncrasies without needing a reason. 

Other than the ending I felt like it covered a lot of standard teenagers experiences in life - boys, girls, heartbreak, love, the freaks, the cool kids, discovering your sexuality, family, friendship, abuse, experimenting with drugs, and trying to find out who you really are.