Link Love

Here are some of my favorite things I found around the internet this week:

  • I’m feeling pretty excited for Into the Woods thanks to this EW featurette.
  • In addition to raving about Serial earlier this week, I’ve already listened to the latest episode twice and the first episode all over again to hopefully derive more clues. My name is Kelley and I am addicted to this podcast.
  • I squealed when I saw that Rainbow Rowell contributed to a story collection. (I swear, I would pay to read that woman’s grocery lists.) But seriously, wouldn’t this make an excellent holiday gift? (Not a hint, those who know me, but rather a warning that this is likely what you’re getting for Christmas from me.)
  • Have you read anything from the 2014 National Book Awards list of finalists? I’ve read (and lovedAll the Light We Cannot See, and am really excited to read Lila
  • I really enjoyed learning about Christina of Sweden on Stuff You Missed in History Class.
  • I’m hosting an Awesomely Bad Movie Night this weekend that will feature pumpkin carving, and these bookish jack’o’lanterns serve as pretty fantastic inspiration.
  • This made me so happy that the internet exists. Because really, where else could you find Dachshund’s Creek?

Happy perusing and happy weekend!

Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Description from the publisher: From 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.

I cannot adequately describe how lovely and poignant this book is, so I will simply say that you should absolutely read it and be prepared to be moved to your very bones. Despite how sad it became at times, I wanted it to last and last, but couldn’t put it down, so as I neared the end, I found myself rereading passages to prolong my time with the interweaving stories. All the Light We Cannot See will undoubtedly be the most beautiful book I read this year.