Currently Reading

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon - This was a good read, but sort of a winter version of beach reading.  Ski lodge reading, maybe?  Told through the diary entries of Sara from her life in a Vermont farmhouse in the early 20th century and through present day Ruthie, living in that same isolated farmhouse, The Winter People tells the story of a darkness that lives in the deep woods of West Hall, Vermont.  There have always been rumors and whispers about those woods, but when they turn out to be true, almost no one is safe.  The story has many layers connecting the past with the present.  It's a chilling novel, but a fun one to curl up with on a snowy night.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - And the reason we have only two books this week?  This behemoth of a novel.  I was seriously impressed with my first foray into David Mitchell's writing and knew that I had to read Cloud Atlas as well.  Basically, it's brilliant.  Mitchell is a genius.  The novel is broken up into six different novellas, each with a different setting, narrator, and vibe.  They are all so different from one another that it's incredible that they were all written by the same author.  All of the novellas are loosely tied together, and while each one stands on its own, the sum of all of them is truly something beautiful and epic.