Ok, so I know I'm a little late to the game reading ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis. In fact, Veronica already has posted about it...over two years ago. But we all know how high To-Be-Read lists get.

From the author's website:

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder. When Amy is frozen aboard the interstellar spaceship Godspeed, she expects to be woken in 300 years on a new planet. Instead, someone wakes her up early…and if Amy doesn’t figure out soon, the next people woken up might not survive–including her parents.

Anyhow, this week I finished the first installment of the series. And WOW. Holy world-building, Batman. The vivid details--and the character's interactions with them--make for a jaw-dropping realism. Speaking of characters, Revis' are complex, fun, and great tour guides through the book's seamless plot. There's plenty of action and intrigue. A good amount of romance, but not enough to make me dry heave (it happens sometimes within YA).

There's been a ton of buzz around Revis' series...and now I know why.  I can't wait to read the next one (and it's here--somewhere--in my To-Be-Read pile. Seriously, it's got to be in here. Just give me a moment to find it...)

What I'm reading this week...

DAMN FEW by Rorke Denver

An excellent autobiography by one of our nation’s most elite warriors. DAMN FEW is fascinating and well-written, and doesn’t shy away from hard topics. Denver, an officer in the US Navy SEALs, covers in detail the sacrifices SEALs and their families make, and the realities of being in the business of war and killing—yet somehow this book is incredibly inspiring, and deeply moving.

I always feel tremendous gratitude for those in civil or military service, but I’m especially thankful for them this week, with all of the tragic events that have unfolded in Boston, DC and Texas.

Diesel, if by chance you read this: thank you.

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.






Yes, this is an adult book.  Yes, it was made into a marginally okay movie that in no way did this story justice.  Yes, I wish the ending were different.  But this is one of my favorite books ever.  I love the way that the main character's ability to travel through time is a curse.  I loved how Henry went back in time to visit his loved ones in the past.  I loved the way Claire meets her future husband (literally) and falls in love with him long before she ever meets him in the present.  I remember dying for that moment when they would finally meet in the present, and  I loved that the tables were flipped completely with Claire knowing Henry and Henry being the one in the dark for a change.  

This love story is unconventional, gorgeous, dark and addictive.   

I never thought I would say this, but I haven't been reading much lately.  I've always been the person who goes through two--sometimes three--novels a week.  They're how I relax.  I read during my lunch and often instead of watching TV.  But things have been a little hectic lately.  Relaxing moments have been few and far between.

Plus, I feel I need to add a caveat--I haven't been reading many published novels lately.  I've been reading for research--and because the idea is so new and so unformed, I don't even want to talk about what I'm reading.  And I've been beta reading other people's projects.  And I can assure you, I will be talking all of these up when they start to come out (though we all know publishing timelines, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait a year or more.)  There is some good stuff in the works here, people.  Be prepared.

I also decided to pick up a novel for adults.  I haven't read much fiction outside of YA for a while, so I figured it was a good time to start.  And I absolutely adore Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout, All Clear).  She's won eleven Hugo Awards and eight Nebula Awards and been nominated for many more.  She is (in two words) freaking brilliant.

But wait (you say).  You read historical novels, Katy.  What are you doing reading science fiction?

That's the beauty of some of Connie Willis's novels.  To me, they don't read like science fiction.  They are theoretically set in the near future, where time travel is possible and historians at Oxford University use it to study the past.

Imagine that.  Actually being able to go back in time and experience life we've been reading about.

I'll give you a minute.

I read To Say Nothing of the Dog several years ago and it totally hooked me on Connie Willis's ability not only to make a believable world in the future, but to get all of her facts straight in the past.  Blackout and All Clear brought clarity and immediacy to World War II.  But I had never picked up The Doomsday Book and I didn't realize why until I told my sister I was reading it and she said (spoiler alert!), "That book almost made me never read another Connie Willis because everyone dies."

I knew this already.  Doomsday is about the early efforts of the historians to understand and use the time travel "Net".  It's about a future virus that affects Oxford over Christmas.  And it's about a young historian who goes back to the Middle Ages.  During the year the bubonic plague arrives in England.  Plus it has the word doomsday in the title.  Of course everyone's going to die.  (spoiler alert--everyone doesn't die.  But some people die.)

What I like best about this book?  The authenticity.  I love how surprised the historian is when she goes back to (what she thinks is) 1320 and is surprised by the "lean-tos" that provide the village housing.  How she knows more Latin than the village priest.  How she can't understand a word anyone is saying despite having studied Chaucerian English.  How relatable the characters in the past are--just like people today with desires and hopes and fears and children who love puppies.  Like I said before--it's brilliant.

If you haven't tried Connie Willis and are in any way shape or form interested in history or science fiction, give her a try.  I suggest starting with To Say Nothing of the Dog because as well as being fascinating and including a great romance, it's also hilarious.

Lately I've been experimenting with various forms of entertainment to constructively pass the time while exercising.   My recent choice was a book selected based on rave reader reactions from people who don't usually gush.  I didn't know what to expect and knew nothing about the story except that it was contemporary realistic fiction.

Or at least I thought it was.

ELEANOR & PARK by Rainbow Rowell is actually set in the 80s.  Although the main characters are teenagers, this novel seamlessly crosses over to an adult audience. Adult readers will strongly connect to every nuance of the age -- from the hairstyles to the gymsuits to the music. Especially to the music.

Even if you weren't a teenager in the 80s, you'll love this book.

And you'll especially love Eleanor and Park.

From the author's website:

“Bono met his wife in high school,” Park says.

“So did Jerry Lee Lewis,” Eleanor answers.

“I’m not kidding,” he says.

“You should be,” she says, “we’re 16.”

“What about Romeo and Juliet?”

“Shallow, confused, then dead.”

“I love you,” Park says.

“Wherefore art thou,” Eleanor answers.

“I’m not kidding,” he says.

“You should be.”

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.