Top 5 Tuesday is back! Long hosted by Shanah @bionicbookworm (she was the creator), she has now new challenges awaiting her and Meeghan from@meeghanreads has become our new mastermind!!!

This week’s topic is : books I feel glad I read

Well this is an interesting topic as I read for my enjoyment but also te be enlightened, to open my eyes. These last are usually the books that I am glad I read.

Because I learned new things. Because I see the world with another perspective. Because I am not longer prejudiced.

This week, the book I am featuring have all helped me being a better human being or they helped me to better understand some problems.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini: opened my eyes on the inhuman condition of women under the Taliban regime

Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseinie literally broke my heart. The immigration problems are acute. We so often fear these strangers coming into our countries. But the books below literally made me grasp that no, they didn’t come in our countries for superficial reasons. These migrants come because their lives are threatened or so bad that they dream of a better future. Is that so bad?

The Radius of Us is about young migrants escaping their country from South America to go to the US. That book was written pre Trump era and the US policy was already very bad.

The Bride Test may be a romance, its heroine is a migrant from Asia. She dreams of a beter future for her daughter.

A Very Large Expanse of Sea is the last one about immigration but I loved it because it broaches the problem of Islam being associated with terrorism. That book takes place right aftere 9/11.

These books below made me realize how some people really struggle to be accepted for who they are. Be it because they are homosexual or transgender or autists or …

Wolfsong by TJ Klune was my first MM romance and made me truly realize that love is love, whatever the gender.

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The Silver Cage just destroyed me. Because it made me see that some people are so intolerant, so narrow minded that they force some of us to live a false live. To pretend being something else than what they truly are with sometimes fatal consequences.

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Birthday is the first book making me feel to the roots of my hair what being transgender was. What it costs the person in silent suffering. How difficult it was to accept and be accepted. I shed buckets of tears but that book was a life saver for one of my friend whose kid is transgender. I recommended that read and that opened a dialogue with her kid who had been suffering silently for so long.

This book was also a perfect read to realize what being autist means for the person but also for the family as a whole.

Then you also have books that taught me some facts I ignored about past events. I have a real interest for World War Two and these books all taught me something about it.

From Sand and Ash by Amy Harmon was full of information about the role played by the Vatican and all the priests and nuns in helping Jews.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn made me discover the Night Witches, these Russian female pilots so feared by German soldiers! I had absolutely no idea.

The Fountain of Silence by Ruta Sepetys focused on the theft of kids from Franco’s opponents to be given to his partisans. These babies were rumored dead while they had been given to Franco’s followers. I was so shocked to discover this that I wondered what they had taught me in school!

These are much more than five books but I was feeling passionate by today’s topic 😀 

What books are you glad to have read?

Thanks for reading.

Sophie