The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading (actually listening to, which I recommend in this case) an offbeat, captivating celebrity memoir by Matthew McConaughey; a thriller that's about a cheating husband, genetic cloning, and the strong, jilted wife who's out for revenge; and Sally Rooney's heart-wrenching coming-of-age story about two young people from different worlds within the same small Irish town and how they come together and tear each other apart in their quests for love and self-realization.
Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms?
01 Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
"I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops."
McConaughey uses his decades of diaries, his lived experiences, his memories, and the avenues that led to inspiration and realizations to write "a love letter to life." I'm listening to this as an audiobook, and McConaughey's voice pulls you into his wacky encounters, lust for adventure, and sometimes offbeat self-reflection.
I recently messaged my friend Hannah about how I'm feeling about this book: "It's Matthew McConaughey's world and we're all just L-I-V-I-N' in it!"
02 The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
This title and its cover art didn't clue me in to the story's premise. Once I delved in, I realized that The Echo Wife title fits the plot wonderfully. (Although I think the cover--showcasing an engagement ring and its reflection--seem to sell short the sci-fi elements of this book.) The thriller is about the forces that drive apart a husband and wife, but it's not what you might expect.
Evelyn Caldwell is a brilliant scientist who has long enjoyed an inspiring professional relationship with her husband, also a scientist. She's winning awards and well-deserved international attention for her incredible genetic cloning advancements--but people have noticed that her husband is mysteriously absent from her side as she collects her many honors.
This is about betrayal and revenge, but I didn't know the full premise before I started reading, and I almost dropped this one when I realized what was going on!
03 Normal People by Sally Rooney
Marianne, a solitary figure living in a large house outside of town, and Connell, a popular athlete whose mother cleans Marianne's house, grew up together in small-town Ireland but were essentially strangers. Toward the end of high school they begin to hesitantly connect, and this intersection of their lives leads to broken hearts, self-realization, true love, devastating misunderstandings, betrayals, and a strongly forged link between them, for better or worse.
I'm not sure what took me so long to start this heartbreaking and lovely and disturbing and deep novel by Sally Rooney. I think I was hung up on the "heartbreaking" aspect and worried whether there was enough "lovely" to help me get through it.
I'm ready to embrace the television version--adaptations often make me nervous and sometimes annoyed ("It didn't happen like that in the book!") but this sounds as though it's excellently done. Also: Irish accents, check!