“What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.” Okay. I would recommend reading the book first, then listening to the song afterwards. A magical story imagining a race of mermaids that have descended from children from pregnant African slave women who were tossed overboard from their slave ships. The story has chilling parallels to the world today, and the writing is somewhat confusing, but the story is beautiful. I hope they will rewrite the story again, perhaps with a more established author, so they can truly dive into the narrative.

"Secretly, Lucien was ashamed that he was so useless to his country. Sometimes, he felt guilty that he was alive." An architect in Nazi-occupied Paris who has little empathy for the Jews, but is slowly roped into using his architectural finesse to creating elaborate hiding places for them. What starts off as intrigue and the urge to live up to the challenge, slowly turns into something more as he starts to realize how his work is affecting the lives of others. A quick and smooth read, I really enjoyed the development of Lucien's character.

“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.” A story about a group of students in a boarding school that holds secrets that even they are not aware of. Page after page we learn a little more about the truth behind this microsociety, and why the children are raised in such a particular manner. The concept itself (once you know the ending!) is mind-boggling, and you will spend ages talking about it once you're done!

“We intuitively believe social and physical pain are radically different kinds of experiences, yet the way our brains treat them suggests that they are more similar than we imagine.” A fascinating read about how humans are wired to be social, and how our emotional health is as important as our physical health, and should be taken care of as such. Lieberman successfully writes this book in a audience friendly manner, highlighting and describing scientific evidence in a manageable way. I took my red pencil with me as I read through this, and must have underlined 80% of the whole book....!