meg reads and reads

Title: The Wind Through the Keyhole Author: Stephen King A story inside a story inside another story sounds like it should be a mess, but somehow The Wind Through the Keyhole isn't. Stephen King's return to the Dark Tower universe--set between the fourth and fifth books--is surprisingly tight and ended up being one of the most enjoyable trips I've taken through Mid-World. The book starts with Roland and his ka-tet taking shelter from a brutal freezing storm. While they wait it out, Roland tells them about a mission from his youth, when his father sent him and Jamie DeCurry to a small town to investigate a series of murders committed by a shape-shifting creature. Roland would have preferred to take Cuthbert or Alain, but his father chose Jamie instead. We've spent plenty of time with young Roland before, but I enjoyed seeing him dropped in what is essentially a murder mystery. Tracking the creature requires more than being quick with a gun, and the investigation fits sur...

Title: 11/22/63 Author: Stephen King 11/22/63 is more than 800 pages long, which sounds like a commitment until you're several hundred pages in and wondering how you got there so quickly. Jake Epping is a high school English teacher whose friend Al introduces him to a portal hidden in the back of his diner. It leads to the same moment in 1958 every time, and Al has spent years thinking about what could be done with it. His answer is ambitious: stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK. There are rules. Every trip begins at the same point, only two minutes pass in the present no matter how long you're gone, and going back again resets whatever you changed the last time. Al also warns Jake that the past is obdurate. It resists being changed. Jake makes one test run before committing himself to the much larger task ahead. One of his first stops on the main trip is Derry, Maine, not long after the events of It . Richie and Beverly turn up briefly, and Derry is about as welcomin...

Title: Three Ordinary Girls Author: Tim Brady Tim Brady's Three Ordinary Girls brings to light the astonishing, bone-chilling courage of Truus Oversteegen, her sister Freddie, and Hannie Schaft--three teenage Dutch freedom fighters who spent World War II seducing, sabotaging, and assassinating Nazi occupiers and collaborators. On paper, this is an absolute blockbuster of historical non-fiction. These were literal teenagers riding bicycles through the Netherlands with pistols tucked into their coats, carrying out hits for the Dutch Resistance. It should be impossible to make that boring. Yet, somehow, the narrative structure almost manages it. The primary drawback of the book is its execution. Brady's research is undeniably thorough, but the prose often reads less like a propulsive narrative thriller and more like an academic log of logistics. The pacing tends to stall, turning what ought to be heart-pounding, high-stakes undercover operations into a somewhat listless sequence o...

Title: Careless People Author: Sarah Wynn-Williams Sarah Wynn-Williams's Careless People enters the ring as a blistering, tell-all expose of tech-giant arrogance, and for the most part, it lands a heavy blow. The author originally fought hard to join Facebook as an idealistic young international lawyer eager to shape social media's global impact. What follows is a slow-motion descent into corporate disillusionment as the "frog in a pot" reality sets in, kept bubbling by golden handcuffs, stock equity, and basic self-preservation (like needing health insurance--which, honestly, fair). The most satisfying part of the book is watching Wynn-Williams dismantle the reputations of people who have spent years carefully curating their public images. She pulls back the curtain on the rank hypocrisy of "leaning in," exposing how high-minded feminism and performative empowerment routinely dissolved into workplace toxicity, explosive rants, and a culture that turned a bl...

Title: World's End Author: Upton Sinclair World's End was my very first introduction to Upton Sinclair, and it absolutely will not be my last. It is a compelling coming-of-age novel that captures the upheaval surrounding World War I with remarkable historical breadth while never losing sight of the people caught inside it. What makes the novel work is its protagonist, Lanny Budd. Because of his birth and upbringing, Lanny has access to worlds that rarely intersect. Growing up on the Côte d'Azur as an expatriate American, he is equally at home in French salons, English country estates, German castles, and conversations with servants and peasants. Through his eyes, starting as a thirteen-year-old in 1913, we watch society stubbornly deny the impending conflict right up until it ignites, and then navigate the stark realities of surviving it. Sinclair's political leanings are well known, but he resists reducing the conflict to heroes and villains. He weaves in competing per...

Title: Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come Author: Jessica Pan As a devoted introvert whose ideal afternoon is one spent in blissful solitude, I approached Jessica Pan's Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come with a healthy dose of side-eye. The premise alone--a self-proclaimed shy introvert pledging to spend an entire year acting like an extrovert--sounds less like a self-improvement journey and more like a custom-designed psychological thriller.  I wasn't expecting it to become one of my favorite nonfiction books of the year. What follows is hilarious, deeply relatable, and unexpectedly moving. Most motivational "get out of your comfort zone" books feel like they were written by innate extroverts who simply don't understand the physical drain of a crowded room. Pan, however, writes entirely from the trenches of true introversion. After her closest friends move away, she realizes she's left with the adult version of an almost impossible task:...