The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm listening to the first book in Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines mystery trilogy, Pines; I'm listening to Ina Garten's memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens; and I'm reading Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 Pines (Wayward Pines #1) by Blake Crouch
In the first book in Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy, secret agent Ethan Burke wakes up in a strange place, by a river, horribly bruised and in pain--with no memory of his own name, his job, or his history--much less what on earth has happened to leave him in such a state.
As his memory comes back to him in pieces, he recalls that his mission--before a devastating car crash left him reeling--was to locate two missing federal agents who had been dispatched to investigate potential crimes in Wayward Pines, Idaho, a month prior. They haven't been heard from in weeks.
But Burke is developing more questions than answers. He can't get through to his wife and family in Seattle, no one seems to believe he is who he says he is, and he's not sure whether the electric fence surrounding the town is meant to keep something out or keep residents in.
I'm listening to Pines as an audiobook.
You can find my review of Blake Crouch's Upgrade here, my review of his novel Recursion (mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore) here and my review of Dark Matter here.
02 Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
Ina Garten, often considered synonymous with the name of her former specialty food shop in the Hamptons, Barefoot Contessa, offers a personal, thoughtful memoir in Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
Ina shares her life story, beginning with a difficult, abusive childhood and continuing to her marriage to Jeffrey while she was still in college, to her government job writing the nuclear energy budget and policy papers under President Ford and President Carter, then a flight of fancy when she bought and learned to run the Hamptons store Barefoot Contessa--necessitating extended time apart from Jeffrey and a very real scare that the relationship wouldn't survive.
Ina is candid and thoughtful, offering business tips, personal reflections, and a wry sense of humor. She reads the audiobook version of her story, and I'm enjoying listening to her voice as she relates key elements of her life.
03 Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital is garnering attention as the winner of the Booker Prize 2024.
The slim book traces a single day in the lives of six astronauts orbiting the earth at seventeen thousand miles an hour, clinging to Coordinated Universal Time as they pass through sixteen sunsets and sunrises, watching familiar geographic shapes come in and out of sight and tracking metropolitan areas and the darkness indicating rural life.
Meanwhile each astronaut thinks of family members on earth, prepares dehydrated meals, exercises, engages with each other, and attends to the minutiae of an extended stay in small quarters in space.
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