Travelling and Books

Posted March 28, 2018 by Sarah Callanan

As I mentioned in my last post, I am in California!  It is currently a balmy 72 degrees outside, and I am enjoying the break from winter (although it has apparently warmed up in Massachusetts since I left). 

One of the (very few) benefits of a long six-hour flight from Boston to San Diego is that it gives you a long, uninterrupted period of time to read.  As a future librarian, I obviously love to read and am a hardcore bibliophile, and I always am grateful for any opportunity to read.  Unfortunately, my life has been pretty busy lately, so I haven’t had much time for leisure reading in the past few months, but as I said, the flight gave me some time to catch up. 

Here are some of the books that I read (or in one case re-read) on my flight, all of which I recommend to you:

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
  • Admittedly this was a re-read, but I love this book to pieces, and I had not picked this book up in over a decade.  Meg Murry was one of my childhood literary heroes, and this young adult science fiction novel is one of my favorites.  There is also a movie adaption that is currently in theaters
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosselini
  • This is an emotional and moving book about two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, whose lives become intertwined in this story that spans several generations.  The author also wrote the book The Kite Runner. 
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
  • One of the biggest books of 2017, it is also Gail Honeyman’s debut novel.  It’s about a young woman, Eleanor Oliphant, who is a lonely introvert with a troubled past who comes into her own and starts to connect with others throughout the novel. 
• Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
  • This is a World War II era novel based on real events.  It intertwines three narratives, the story of Kasia Kuzmerick, Polish teenager who is a fictional character based on several real Ravensbrück prisoners; Caroline Ferriday, a real wealthy woman who ended up bringing a large group of Ravensbrück survivors to the United States for medical treatment; and Herta Oberheuser, a real ruthless Nazi surgeon who performed repugnant experiments on women at Ravensbrück. 

I wish you happy reading during you travels!