Read this book

I’m subscribed to a newsletter that provides daily (legit) links to free and cheap ebooks for the Kobo. The problem, I found quickly, is that way more often than not, the books that I’d get from those links turned out to be… let’s be kind by saying “not so good”. So while it’s not unusual to be drawn in by an appealing summary and a decent cover–my experience suggests that you’d can’t always judge a good book by its cover, but you can frequently judge a bad one by its cover–it turns out that such books are rarely worth finishing.

Cut to several months back, when I took this problem to a writing group on Facebook and asked for suggestions for good books. I got a nice list of recommended titles, and among them is what turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read in years:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

It’s a hugely engaging time-hopping story about events leading up to a catastrophic plague that wipes out most of humanity, as well as how survivors carry on afterward. Yet despite the horrors innate to such a scenario, it offers insight to how and why people carry on after such unparalleled devastation, even with hope toward the end of something thought by the characters to be long gone.

As with any work of art, Station Eleven won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but I loved it.