My TBR Meme is hosted by Michelle at Because Reading, this monthly meme’s purpose to help tackle one’s ever-growing tbr. On the first Saturday of each month participants post three books from their to-read list and allow others to vote on what they should read next. The following Saturday, the winning book is revealed with a review of said book posted on the last Saturday of the month.
I think the reinforcement and interactive aspect of this meme will really help knock a few books off my ever-growing to-read list, I’ve had the following three books on my bookshelf for over a year and I’m excited to read any one of te following:
This Month I Picked
All the Light We Cannot Seeby Anthony Doerr
Goodreads
Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeFrom the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
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).
The Mapmaker's Children
by Sarah McCoy
Goodreads
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Baker's Daughter, a story of family, love, and courage
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.
Flight of Dreams
by Ariel Lawhon
Goodreads
On the evening of May 3rd, 1937, ninety-seven people board the Hindenburg for its final, doomed flight to Lakehurst, New Jersey. Among them are a frightened stewardess who is not what she seems; the steadfast navigator determined to win her heart; a naive cabin boy eager to earn a permanent spot on the world’s largest airship; an impetuous journalist who has been blacklisted in her native Germany; and an enigmatic American businessman with a score to settle. Over the course of three hazy, champagne-soaked days their lies, fears, agendas, and hopes for the future are revealed. Flight of Dreams is a fiercely intimate portrait of the real people on board the last flight of the Hindenburg. Behind them is the gathering storm in Europe and before them is looming disaster. But for the moment they float over the Atlantic, unaware of the inexorable, tragic fate that awaits them.
Brilliantly exploring one of the most enduring mysteries of the twentieth century, Flight of Dreams is that rare novel with spellbinding plotting that keeps you guessing till the last page and breathtaking emotional intensity that stays with you long after.
Vote
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I can’t speak for the other two books because I haven’t read them, but All the Light You Cannot See is BRILLIANT. The writing is beautiful, the way Doerr plays with time is fascinating, and the story itself is tragic and captivating. I hope you enjoy it if you get around to reading it!
Mapmaker’s Children is great.
I love the sound of The Mapmaker’s Children and the underground railroad always fascinated me.
I love, love, love your choices this week! I loved The Mapmaker’s Daughter. I really want to read the other two you mentioned–especially Flight of Dreams. It’s on my list to get to this year. Go with the one I’ve read or the one I really want to read . . . Choices, choices . . . I hope you enjoy whichever wins! Have a great weekend.
I love your choices and it was tough to vote on just one. But I voted for The Mapmaker’s Children. I hope you enjoy the winning book!
I voted for the Mapmaker’s Children because I’ve read that one and enjoyed it!
I haven’t read any of these, but All the Light We Cannot See has to be my vote so I can help you get it off your list. It’s still on mine, and I own a copy, yet it sounds so good.
I haven’t read any of these but I voted for All The Light We Cannot See because I’ve heard it is good. I hope you enjoy the winner.