Booking Through Thursday - Winter Reads

The northern hemisphere, at least, is socked in by winter right now… So, on a cold, wintry day, when you want nothing more than to curl up with a good book on the couch … what kind of reading do you want to do?

In Hawaii, winter means that the tradewinds come from the north and we have 60 degree evenings. Brrr. When the wind is blowing and the temperature is hitting the low 60's, I like to read dystopian, perpetually winter books like Life as We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer. I can hunker down into the blankets and the reading makes me feel like the weather is colder than it really is.

Life As We Knew It

An asteroid is coming towards the moon and Miranda, her mom and brother join the block party outside to watch it when BOOM the asteroid knocks the moon off its orbit and brings it closer to earth causing major climate changes in mere seconds. Through her diary entries, I followed 16-year-old Miranda and her family's struggle for survival in their small town in Pennsylvania. This book is like The Road without as much violence and depravity.

The true sign of a good read was that I knew I had to be at work but I started it at school during SSR (silent sustained reading) time (15 minutes x 2 periods), then kept reading it until I finally finished at 1:30 in the morning, knowing my alarm was going off at 5.  Why did I torture myself? The premise was plausible to my non-scientific imagination. While reading it in the middle of a Hawaii "grayspell" with skies like "Reynold's Wrap" I felt like I was with Miranda - I had a desire to turn on every light, wash my hair with hot water to take away the soot and cook large batches of food for canning. In fact, for dessert I took out all the half-eaten cartons of ice cream and I gathered my family and sat around the television eating mindlessly until the ice cream was gone. After all, If I have to live in a post-apocalyptic world, I will miss electricity, television and ice cream.