So moving and absolutely touching. The writing was flawless in my opinion. I was absolutely blown away by this book.

What a lovely book about hope, resilience, and the power of books. A group of men decide they need to save as many books as they can from bombed out and abandoned buildings, in a desire to create a place for people to read and feed their souls. Their efforts create a nice escape for the people caught up in a civil war. The book is inspiring, remarkable, and eye opening.

It's hard to decide what would be the most critical item to have on hand if your city was under siege. Food, medicine, clean water? How about books? I bet you didn't even think about books. For Darayya, a town right in the middle of Syria's civil war, books were the thing that kept people going.

Some remarkable young men decided to save as many books as they could, gathering them from abandoned buildings, digging through rubble, even under the bombing. They did this to create a hidden library where anyone could come and escape into another world.
When the library became a hit, they started offering classes on reading, lessons in Engliah, and lectures on many subjects.

I found the story fascinating, but it was frustrating at times. It's not organized well. They author skips from subject to subject. Sometimes the quotes are well used to illustrate a point, but often they're just stuck in there and they go on too long.

It's a sobering reflection on modern warfare. It makes me angry that the world stood by and did nothing. Now the flow of refugees is a crisis, but with timely intervention, perhaps it could have been avoided. Read this one not for the writing, but for the story of these brave individuals.

This book, set during the most tragic of Syria’s war torn years, gives a first hand rendition of what it takes for humanity to survive and how food for the mind and soul is almost as important as food for the body. It sometimes got a little confusing keeping up with all the people who were important to the story. The sheer determination of the people of Daraya to build a secret library is more than impressive. It is inspiring.

Syria's Secret Library is an amazing story. Think about it. Being under siege for years, would you need only food and water to survive? This story is about food for the soul. The mental aspect of survival is often overlooked. I found the story engrossing and thought provoking as a different perspective about those caught in a terrible situation with no escape. The hope found here is inspiring, yet tragic. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

"I would have told them that the soul needs books just like the body needs food"

This book has one constant message throughout and that is...hope.
Amongst war, hunger, loss and pain, a brighter future can be salvaged and beauty is always there if you look for it.
This book illuminates the struggle in Syria, and finds the glimmer of hope and humanity that will not be put out. Members of the community in Daraya, formed a secret library. Where books can set you free.
"The books themselves help us forget all the troubles around us. When we are reading, the author takes us away to a different world. That's something we really need, it gives us peace of mind."

Not only do books offer an escape but also hope for the future. They want the young to be able to think for themselves, become educated and one day rebuild the country.
An illuminating novel about the human spirit.

***Netgalley and PublicAffairsBooks gave me an advanced copy of this novel for my honest review.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

Ursula K Le Guin tells the story of a place whose happiness depends on one child being miserable in “The One Who Walks Away from Omelas” and the reactions to those when they discover it. In part, our ability to exist in the world is on our ability to disregard or ignore horrors, but sometimes we refuse that happiness, refuse to bow to the horrors. In many ways, Thomson’s book makes me think of that story as well as how much we take for granted. If you teach, then you know that tare a great many students who do not read for pleasure (shot, just ask how many people have read LOTR or GoT instead of just watching), yet this book is partly about the human spirit and partly about why books are important.

Thomson chronicles the story of a group of people who start a library in Daraya, a town close to Damascus. According to Thomson, the town has always had a proud history of peaceful protest, and therefore, caught up in the Civil War. Some of the town’s population flees, others stay. Some of those who stay realize the fighting is simply more than picking up a gun, but also the transmission of knowledge – their fight style includes the founding of schools and a library. In part, the library comes from a desire to save books that were bombed out homes. The lengths that the men, it seems it was largely men who gathered the books, went to collect items – books furniture- and the sheer fairness in which they kept records about where the items came from.

In part, Thomson also chronicle show these men, and later women, not only use the library but also try to continue as much as a normal life as they possibly can. The library, it seems, becomes both a cause and a symbol – not only of what was, of what we should be, of how we learn, but also of what the revolution is fighting for as well as the difference in sides.

We know from history that the quickest way to destroy a people is to destroy a culture. Destroy the books, the art, and so on. Culture can mean a people but it also can be a city. The library in Daraya was part of this - a desire to preserve the need for knowledge, the thirst for reading that many people never develop at least where access to a library is easy.

While I would have loved a bit more description of what books made up the library, Thomson does mention quite a few works, in particular the favorite works of the people who frequented the library. The list includes some that are unfamiliar to Western readers. In many ways, this insures that Thomson’s reporting serves another important function of a library – as a bridge between peoples.

"Syria's Secret Library" tells the incredible true story of those who managed to improvise a library for a beleaguered community. Through the focal point of this underground oasis of books, readers are given an incredibly intimate look into what daily life during the siege of the Damascus suburb of Darayya, an experience similar to countless others across Syria in the midst of its devastating civil war. But more than anything, "Syria's Secret Library" shows just how far people will go in order to ensure that they will be able to feed their souls.