11/22/63

You know how I can tell a book was good?  When I have to wait a few days after finishing it to begin a new one.  I finished this one Saturday night and couldn't even think about starting something new until Monday evening.

This is vintage Stephen King.  This is why I fell in love with his writing forty years ago.  This is falling into a book and letting it consume me.  This is talking about it to anyone who will listen.

I was in the ninth grade when Kennedy was shot so I remember it well.  This book took me right back to that era because King captures the culture so well. 

Jake Epping is an English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine.  Al Templeton owns a diner built over an abandoned chemical plant.  In his back room is a portal to September 9, 1958.  Al tried staying in the past long enough to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President Kennedy but he developed cancer and couldn't stay.  Now, he begs Jake to go through the portal to do it for him.

Besides the time travel aspect, there isn't much science fiction or scary, gory scenes.  This is just a good, old-fashioned story written by an expert craftsman.  It's a long book but I wanted it to be longer. 

Of course, we know going into it that Jake will not be successful.  So, it's fun to imagine how King will end the book.  And the ending is masterful! 

These Things Hidden and Daughter of Smoke and Bone

It feels so good to be reading, again!

These Things Hidden was a real page turner.  I gulped it in just a couple days.  Alison is twenty-two and has just been released from jail for murdering her newborn five years earlier.  Her parents and younger sister want nothing to do with her.

Her younger sister Brynn is trying to make a life for herself away from her hometown but can't get past the horrible events that happened the night her sister gave birth.

Now, Alison must try to find a way to go on with her life and make amends with her family.

This is a chick book, to be sure, but I liked it.

If any of you participate in Sunday Scribblings, you'll recognize the name Laini Taylor as one of the original authors of that meme.  That's where I first found her.  I checked out her blog just as she was getting ready to give birth to her adorable daughter Clementine Pie and keep going back to see pictures of her as she grows up.

Laini writes a genre (YA fantasy) I don't normally go for but I thought I'd give her book a try since it was getting rave reviews.  I'm so glad I did.  She's a wonderful writer!

Karou is a blue-haired teenager living in Prague going to art school. But she isn't like most normal teenagers; she was raised by devils and must occasionally leave her regular world to collect teeth for Brimstone, her "father."

Then she meets Akiva, an angel, and her enemy.  They are drawn to one another even though Akiva is still in mourning for his lost love Madrigal.

The age-old enemies-faling-in-love theme is given a new twist in this novel.  But, even more than the compelling scenario is the writing.  Ahhh, the writing!  It is so beautiful! Not a page goes by where there isn't a wonderful description to please my poetic heart.

And, now, I'm on to Stephen King's latest 11/22/63.  More fantasy!  Hmmm...what's going on with me?

The Litigators

Yay!  I finished a book!

I had pre-ordered this one and was thrilled when it became available for download.  I started reading it right away and finished it a couple days later.  It helped that we were flying to Florida for the winter.  I love all the reading time I get when on an airplane.

David Zinc is fed up with the grunt work of being a lawyer in a huge law firm and one day he up and quits.  He stumbles upon a flailing "boutique" firm with only two lawyers and joins them.  Their first case is a class action suit against a giant pharmaceutical company. 

The characters are well drawn and likable and the concept is believable.  I enjoyed it.  But, what this book has, that most of his others don't, is humor.  At one point I had tears rolling down my cheeks! 

I needed a good book like this to get me back into reading mode!