Books: Book Club

BOOK CLUB

WITH ADAM & SAM MORRIS

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Get a jump on your summer reading list with these four excellent recommendations from the owners of Your Brother's Bookstore in downtown Evansville

EXIT WEST by Mohsin Hamid

Blurring the lines between too-real and fantasy, Exit West tells the story of a couple fleeing their war-torn homeland through a series of magic doors that can take them anywhere in the world. It’s part love story, part social commentary, and all beautifully written. Groups of refugees coming from every conflict and corner of the world mingle, merge, and split, looking for a new home. If you can step through a closet door in Chicago and walk out of an Italian bistro, where would you go? What does the world look like if borders are no longer a barrier?

THE PRINCESS BRIDE by William Goldman

Originally published in 1973 by legendary screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men), The Princess Bride is a beloved classic that people of all ages can enjoy. A story within a story, the fable of a princess who falls in love with a farm hand has never been told better. Giants, Rats of Unusual Sizes, sixfingered men, and a Greek with an inconceivable brain all help to fill in a quirky cast of characters you won’t soon forget. This trifecta of adventure, humor and romance culminates in a truly fun and satisfying story for even the pickiest of readers.

SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel

Since the dawn of humanity, man has been obsessed with the end of its existence. Sea of Tranquility is a book that burns slow, but burns bright keeping the reader captivated. The story takes place over multiple time periods: a man in Canada in 1912, a woman searching for the brother of an old friend in 2022, an author (from the moon) on an Earth book tour in 2203, and a group of scientists analyzing if the world is just a simulation in 2401. As the story comes together, the connections between the timelines are revealed until the essence of the narrative is exposed leaving the reader to ask what does being real even mean.

STILL JUST A GEEK by Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton’s annotated memoir is a collection of blog posts, with commentary added a few years later, with more commentary added sixteen years after that. It’s an interesting and refreshing attempt at a memoir, a genre that by its nature tends to go stale quickly. Normally, once a memoir is published, the opinions and memories that are written in it are set in stone and “canon.” Not in this case. Wheaton re-examines not just his memories, but also his writing style, mindset, and level of selfawareness, showing on a very real level how experience changes with perspective.