It’s been a great summer, albeit hectic. And to compliment that, I’ve read a handful of wonderful books that I’m very excited to share with you, and highly recommend you add to your reading list.
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
This shouldn’t be a surprise as one of my favorites summer reads. You know if it’s a Stephen King, it’s going to be amazing. BUT know that this book isn’t a great example of why Stephen King has a cult like following (The Stand, The Shining, It, The Green Mile, 11/22/63, etc.).
This is the first of the Bill Hodges trilogy. On a very cold morning, thousands of folks are camping outside the convention center waiting to be the first for a job fair the very next morning. All of the sudden, a stolen Mercedes plows through the crowd, massacring 8, injuring 15. The killer is never caught.
A few months later, Bill Hodges, a detective, retires. He is still haunted by the unsolved mystery, and very, very bored in retirement. One day, he receives a letter from the prep. And boom! Bill is (unofficially) on the case again. I really liked it, because Stephen King is brilliant, but I don’t know if I liked it enough to continue onto the second part of the trilogy.
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
I really, really, really liked this book. It’s the first sci-fi book I’ve picked up since the Divergent series.
It’s about Jason, an up and coming physicist who’s on the brink of a scientific discovery that can change the world. He ends up putting aside his career and ambitions to begin his family. Fifteen years later, life isn’t so bad, he is content, happy even. A loving wife, a wonderful son, a mediocre career… until one night, heading home, Jason is abducted and driven to the outskirts of Chicago. When he wakes up again, he is in a totally different universe. Well, it’s the same universe, but everything is backwards.
His wife isn’t his wife. His son was never born. He is now the ultra successful physicist he was on the trajectory to be fifteen years prior. I can’t say more without spoiling this book, but WOW it was good. Very quick and easy read. Thriller, sci-fi, and action all rolled into one. Not my typical genre, but fantastic, fantastic. It reminded me a bit of Minority Report, but a million times better.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
I don’t even know what to say about this book. Other than it broke my heart a million times over, and was impossible to put down. Forewarning, it’s very disturbing and graphic. Also, it’s 720 pages (which I believe is the longest fiction novel I’ve ever read — score!), but it was such a captivating read, I went through chunks of 50-80 pages per sitting — I’m not exaggerating.
This is a coming of age story of four friends that met in college in Boston. Malcolm, JB, Willem, and Jude. The story centers mostly around Jude, who had a horrific childhood, which are given small flash backs here and there. (Very slowly though, do we learn what happened when we are taken back to Jude’s childhood, and yikes, yikes, yikes). When we are first introduced to the group of four men, we meet them in their mid twenties, all recently fresh to New York City. Beginning their respective careers. The book takes us through the next few decades of their lives, weaving in and out successes, failures, drugs, relationships, marriages, suicides, everything.
This is definitely a story that you’re left thinking about, and I have to say, A Little Life comes in at my favorite summer 2016 read. It was just, incredible. READ IT.