All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

I had a lot of people recommend this book to me. It took me a LONG time to read it because I got busy with work projects and didn't have much time for reading. It was hard to follow since I had spread it over such a long period of time. Once I got back to it and got into it, I quite enjoyed it. The chapters are short and bounce between the character's stories. Once I got the rhythm of it, I quite enjoyed it.  I do love World War II stories. It is amazing the courage so many people showed during that time.

One story is about a boy in Nazi Germany who lives in a orphanage with his sister.  He is gifted at fixing radios and also has a keen interest in many other things. He listens to a nightly science program broadcast from France. Because he is so good at fixing radio and gifts in math and science, he wins a spot in a Hitler Youth Academy. He is happy to have something to do beyond working in the coal mines that killed his father, however, he has to start to not think about what goes on in the Hitler Youth Academy.

The other story is about a young blind girl named Marie-Laure who lives in Paris. She is cared for by her father who works at a museum. She became blind as a little girl. Her father builds a miniature model of their neighborhood, so she can memorize every street, building and corner. When the war comes to Paris, she and her father go to Saint-Malo to live with a great-uncle who lives in a tall, storied house next to a sea wall.

What does the title mean?
"The title is a reference first and foremost to all the light we literally cannot see: that is, the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect (radio waves, of course, being the most relevant). It’s also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within World War II — that stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title is intended as a suggestion that we spend too much time focused on only a small slice of the spectrum of possibility." 
- Anthony Doerr

Goodreads says:
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful 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 in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. 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, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.