Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for book lovers include Jan Karon's new Mitford novel, and David Mitchell's time-traveling The Bone Clocks.
Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good by Jan Karon; Putnam, 511 pp.; fiction
Mitford, N.C., does not exist on any map of the United States — just in the gentle and warmhearted imagination of best-selling author Jan Karon.
Fans of Karon's popular series about Episcopal priest Father Tim Kavanagh will cheer the arrival of Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good as if returning to a favorite small-town vacation spot.
Faith and love are the driving forces of Tim's life, as he returns to the community of his former parish after a trip to Ireland to figure out his post-retirement life.
While his beloved wife, Cynthia, works on her children's books, Father Tim struggles to fill his days. A crisis erupts at The Lord's Chapel, and the bishop asks Father Tim to return to his former pulpit, much to his dismay. When the owner of the Happy Endings bookstore is put on bed rest for a high-risk pregnancy, Father Tim decides to try his hand at retail.
Paste BN says **** out of four. "Hits the sweet spot at the intersection of your heart and your funny bone."
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell; Random House, 624 pp.; fiction
Holly Sykes, who we first meet as a teenage runaway from an English village, comes to see that she is being used as a pawn by rival cabals of semi-immortal mystics engaged in an invisible war that spans continents and centuries.
Paste BN says ***½ out of four. "When they arrive at the end … many readers will want to begin the journey all over again."
Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1,104 pp.; non-fiction
A biography of the great Romantic composer, written by a celebrated composer and musical scholar.
Paste BN says ****. "Ambitious … surrender to it and it's easy to be swept away."
Lock In by John Scalzi; Tor Books, 336 pp.; fiction
In a near-future society, more than 5 million people are "locked" into their own minds thanks to a vicious contagion.
Paste BN says ***½. "Lock In cements this award-winning writer as one of the best in today's sci-fi community."
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides; Doubleday, 454 pp.; non-fiction
The story of the USS Jeannette and its 1879 polar voyage, which ended with the ship crushed into a watery grave by pack ice and its crew marooned on an ice cap north of Siberia.
Paste BN says ***½ out of four. "Sides spins a propulsive narrative."
Contributing reviewers: Patty Rhule, Kevin Nance, Matt Damsker, Brian Truitt, Gene Seymour