All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

There is just so much to love about this book...the writing, the characters, the pacing, the story.  Doerr managed to take a very well covered topic and come up with a complete original, completely beautiful, and utterly heartbreaking, story. 

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2014: Does the world need yet another novel about WWII? It does when the novel is as inventive and beautiful as this one by Anthony Doerr. In fact, All the Light We Cannot See--while set mostly in Germany and France before and during the war--is not really a “war novel”. Yes, there is fear and fighting and disappearance and death, but the author’s focus is on the interior lives of his two characters. Marie Laure is a blind 14-year-old French girl who flees to the countryside when her father disappears from Nazi-occupied Paris. Werner is a gadget-obsessed German orphan whose skills admit him to a brutal branch of Hitler Youth. Never mind that their paths don’t cross until very late in the novel, this is not a book you read for plot (although there is a wonderful, mysterious subplot about a stolen gem). This is a book you read for the beauty of Doerr’s writing-- “Abyss in her gut, desert in her throat, Marie-Laure takes one of the cans of food…”--and for the way he understands and cherishes the magical obsessions of childhood. Marie Laure and Werner are never quaint or twee. Instead they are powerful examples of the way average people in trying times must decide daily between morality and survival. --Sara Nelson

The Look of Love by Sarah Jio

I love Sarah Jio, she has a great sense of character and setting.  She is single handedly responsible for my obsession with the Pacific Northwest.  This is a great one to pick up for the holiday break.

Book Description via Amazon

Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to see true love. Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic when, on her twenty-ninth birthday, a mysterious greeting card arrives, specifying that Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her thirtieth birthday, or face grave consequences. When Jane falls for a science writer who doesn’t believe in love, she fears that her fate is sealed. Inspired by the classic song, The Look of Love is utterly enchanting.

Call Me Mrs. Miracle by Debbie Macomber

A lovely holiday read...sweet, sentimental and perfect for this time of year.

Book Description via Amazon

Mrs. Miracle on 34th Street

This Christmas, Emily Merkle (just call her Mrs. Miracle) is working in the toy department of Finley's, the last family-owned department store in New York City. And her boss is none other than Jake Finley, the owner's son.

For Jake, holiday memories of brightly wrapped gifts, decorated trees and family gatherings were destroyed in a Christmas Eve tragedy years before. Now Christmas means only one thing to him—and to his father. Profit. Because they need a Christmas miracle to keep the business afloat.

Holly Larson needs a miracle, too. She wants to give her eight-year-old nephew, Gabe, the holiday he deserves. Holly's widowed brother is in the army and won't be home for Christmas, but at least she can get Gabe that toy robot from Finley's, the one gift he desperately wants. If she can figure out how to pay for it…

Fortunately, it's Mrs. Miracle to the rescue. Next to making children happy, she likes nothing better than helping others—and that includes doing a bit of matchmaking!

This Christmas will be different. For all of them.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Very late to the party on this one, but boy am I glad I decided to join.  This is as good as everyone says it is...just go read it...if you don't believe me, trust the *almost* 8,000 five star reviews on Amazon!

From Booklist

A long journey from home and the struggle to find it again form the heart of the intertwined stories that make up this moving novel. Foster teen Molly is performing community-service work for elderly widow Vivian, and as they go through Vivian’s cluttered attic, they discover that their lives have much in common. When Vivian was a girl, she was taken to a new life on an orphan train. These trains carried children to adoptive families for 75 years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the Great Depression. Novelist Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009) brings Vivian’s hardscrabble existence in ­Depression-era Minnesota to stunning life. Molly’s present-day story in Maine seems to pale in comparison, but as we listen to the two characters talk, we find grace and power in both of these seemingly disparate lives. Although the girls are vulnerable, left to the whims of strangers, they show courage and resourcefulness. Kline illuminates a largely hidden chapter of American history, while portraying the coming-of-age of two resilient young women. --Bridget Thoreson

I'll Give you the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Hands down my favorite YA book of the year and quite possible my favorite overall book of the year.  This is just such an incredibly written, heartbreaking, breathlessly beautiful book.  This had my crying, like "crazy woman crying on the elliptical at the gym crying".  I kept dog earring pages (shhhhh don't tell) because there were so many paragraphs that I wanted to remember...forever.  This is definitely going into the permanent collection...simply amazing.


Here are just a few of my favorites...I kinda want to transcribe the whole book...


"My mom, she was really beautiful.  My Dad used to say she could make trees bloom just by looking at them...every morning she used to stand on the deck staring out at the water.  The wind would stream through her hair, her robe would billow behind her.   It was like she was at the helm of a ship, you know?  It was like she was steering us across the sky."  PG 192  (SOB)


"Even God, he have to make the world twice...Yes, so if God can have two tries, why not us?  Or three or three hundred tries." PG 302


"Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people...Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time.  Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things."  PG 354  (OH MY GOD!!!!)


"Mothers are the parachutes."  PG 353 (Yes they are...even when they are not here.)


BOOK DESCRIPTION VIA AMAZON


The New York Times Bestselling story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell
Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

Overwhelmed: work, love, and play when no one has the time By Brigid Schulte

I am really glad I decided to purchase this book and not take it out from the library (I know, I know bad librarian) *but* my copy is now littered with margin notes and underlines and exclamation points.  There was just so much to take in, so many annotated references that I now have a list of must reads a mile long.  I really thought she was writing about my life...driving one to one activity, hauling the other one to something else, a daily list of must dos longer than my arm...ya know your basic mom's life.  And while there is no major answers to these life problems, good suggestions yes, but nothing earth shattering, it brings a necessary awareness to the daily life/work struggle.


Just *one* of my favorites:


"Park the helicopter.  You don't have to be everything on your own and better than everyone else...'Love your kids.  Keep them safe.  Accept them as they are.  Then get out of their way.'"
PG. 283

From Booklist

Journalist Schulte manages to take a fairly pedestrian topic, the value of leisure in modern American society, and turn it into a compelling narrative on work, play, and personal achievement. Liberally peppered with her own experiences as a wife, mother, and Washington Post reporter, this artful blend of memoir and cultural exploration asks hard questions about how to create a well-lived life. Is leisure a waste of time, or the only time to “live fully present”? Are we more concerned about a purpose-driven experience, or bogged down in “banal busyness”? Schulte, juggling the demands of children and work while facing conflicts with her spouse over familial responsibilities, realizes that she is mired in busyness. Her discussions with a wide range of experts clarify her concerns and open her mind to the manufactured madness of a competitive culture and the false promise of the ruthlessly dedicated “ideal worker.” Schulte follows every lead to uncover why Americans are so determined to exhaust themselves for work and what has been lost in the process. For Lean In (2013) fans, and everyone who feels overwhelmed. --Colleen Mondor

Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard

Such a guilty pleasure...think of it as a delicious, decadent piece of chocolate, not necessarily good for you but sooo worth it. 

Book Description via Amazon

Enigmatic and sexy, Professor Gabriel Emerson is a well-respected Dante specialist by day, but by night he devotes himself to an uninhibited life of pleasure. He uses his notorious good looks and sophisticated charm to gratify his every whim, but is secretly tortured by his dark past and consumed by the profound belief that he is beyond all hope of redemption.

When the sweet and innocent Julia Mitchell enrolls as his graduate student, his attraction and mysterious connection to her not only jeopardizes his career, but sends him on a journey in which his past and his present collide.

An intriguing and sinful exploration of seduction, forbidden love, and redemption, Gabriel’s Inferno is a captivating and wildly passionate tale of one man’s escape from his own personal hell as he tries to earn the impossible—forgiveness and love.