I finished two books on the plane:
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, and
The Doomsday Key by James Rollins. "Juliet" is typical Hornby...kind of literate and music- and pop culture-savvy chick lit for men. It's about a reclusive former rock star who starts an email correspondence with one of his fans. Hornby has a vast knowledge of music, and he writes both male and female characters who are believably real. If you've liked any of his previous books (like "Hi Infidelity" or "About A Boy"), or the movies made from them, you'll like this.
"Doomsday" I actually kind of fell into by accident. I downloaded a sample of it one day when I was demonstrating my Kindle to somebody (it was the first book that came up on the Kindle bestseller list that day), then read the sample and got hooked. It's a perfect plane/beach read...pure escapism. Imagine "The DaVinci Code" but way better written. It's apparently one of quite a lengthy series...I don't know that I'll rush to download every single one (like I did with Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series), but I can definitely see reading another one when I'm in the mood for some conspiracies and ancient secrets.
I also started two new books:
The Gates by John Connolly, a fantasy thriller for children that also includes very cogent explanations of some of the principles of quantum mechanics. The basic premise is that the gates of hell have been opened by a mishap at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It's played for laughs, and is charming. And finally,
Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman, a memoir about the year Kerman (who is an upper middle class Caucasian woman who graduated form Smith College)
spent in federal prison for money laundering. So far, it's fascinating, as you might expect. But lately, I've read quite a few memoirs by contemporary women (often of the "fish out of water" or "year long experiment" varieties), and by the end, I kind of hate all of them. I somehow suspect this one will be no different.
