Reading on the Road
Well… it’s good my recent trip wasn’t planned as a reading retreat, because I read two books I thought I was really going to love… and I liked them okay, but they were a little disappointing. First up… I feel really bad saying I didn’t love this book. I know it’s a classic, and everyone else seems to give it rave reviews. It was written in 1979, and the premise is, the main character, a young Black woman living in Los Angeles, goes back and forth in time to the early 1800s, where she lives the experience of a Black woman at that time. I think what I didn’t like was, since it’s billed as “science fiction” I wanted the story to be weirder. Like, once I accepted the premise of time travel, everything kind of played out like I thought it would. I will say it’s a good companion to Gone With the Wind. If you read that book and were lured into thinking slavery wasn’t really that bad, Kindred will set you straight, for sure. Next up… I really thought I would love this! It sounded so good, and everyone says Stephen King is a master storyteller. Well, there was one glaring thing about this book that bothered me. It takes place in 2021, and there was constant mention of Covid. This person wore a mask- this person didn’t. Are you vaxxed? Double vaxxed, Moderna. Pfizer. Covid is a hoax. People are dying. And, politics. Thank goodness we got rid of Trump. The democrats stole the election… and on and on. In the afterword, King says he purposely included these things because he feels a story is more realistic if it has real life details. For me, it was stressful and distracting. I read so I DON’T have to think about politics! I don’t want to relive Covid, and how divisive that was for our country. Every time it was mentioned- which was all the time, it took me out of the story. The story was… interesting. This is not a horror novel, but it was horrIBLE. People are disappearing, and what’s happening to them is gruesome. I did enjoy Holly’s character (when she wasn’t talking about Covid) and enjoyed the process of her investigation. I didn’t love this book, but I’ll definitely give Stephen King another chance. As soon as I got home, I dove into this book- I love it! I’m almost done, and everyone knows you can’t really judge a mystery until the very end, so I’ll talk about it next time. Now, let’s look at that photo of Holly again… Hey, what’s in that Starbucks cup? Muahahahaha! Coming up tomorrow… what I ate (and drank) on this trip. Have you read any of these books? Top photo by Life’s Captured Sparks on Unsplash