Every month, staff at our Downtown branch read books in a specific fiction genre or nonfiction subject, to familiarize themselves with titles they might not have discovered otherwise. Recently they read dystopian fiction - dark stories of people surviving a world that’s been devastated by some future calamity. Here's what staff members read and what they had to say about it:
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
Disturbing, compelling, brutal and gritty. Not a YA novel. I couldn’t put it down. The writing was so good I wanted to keep reading it. 5 stars
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
This futuristic teen novel is the first in a trilogy. 4 stars
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Top of the line writing by one of our top American writers. This amazing story that has a spiritual side to it won the 2007 Pulitzer. 5 stars
Wool by Hugh Howey
Originally self-published, it’s a great, imaginative story that’s a little clumpy. 2 stars
Pines by Blake Crouch
Inspiring the Fox TV show, this story has lots of twists and turns, a slow reveal and a lot of suspense. 5 stars
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
This cybernetic take on the Cinderella story is Book 1 of the young adult series Lunar Chronicles.