63. The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

listened on Libby/borrowed from the library

narrated by Patti Murin

Unabridged audio (15:47)
2020
416 pgs.
Genre/Level
Finished 6/16/2021
Goodreads rating: 3.65 - 42,662 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary Egypt & Boston

First line/s: "My calendar is full of dead people."

My comments: This book blew me away  There's so much to it, multiple stories flowing in and around and together.  There may be some spoilers in the following.  There are some really difficult themes:  1 - end of life, and not just because so much of the story is about the protagonist being a death Doula and deeply involved in hospice.  2 - physics and quantum theory, both of which no matter how "clearly" they are explained, will never be clear to me.  3 - loving, deeply loving, two men at the same time.  And there are two parallel stories about two different women and their situations that cut deeply at the heart.  4 - choices.  5 - family.  6 -  losing a beloved parent.  7 - abandoning everything you know and love to raise an underage sibling.  And I realize there's so much more, layer after layer.  Between the research and the story outline, I can't even imagine how long this book took to write.  And the ending.  Oh my gosh, the ending.   It was brilliant.  It could've ended in two very different ways.  You're left realizing that, in the end, it's always about choices.

Goodreads synopsis:  Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She's on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband, but a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong.

          Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, where she helps ease the transition between life and death for patients in hospice.
          But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.
          After the crash landing, the airline ensures the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family. The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways--the first known map of the afterlife.
          As the story unfolds, Dawn's two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried beside them. Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly asked: What does a life well-lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices...or do our choices make us? And who would you be, if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now?

48. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

read on my iPhone
2016, Crown
342 pgs.
Adult SciFi
Finished 6/3/18
Goodreads rating:  4.1 - 126,999 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting:  Contemporary USA

First line/s:  "I love Thursday nights.  They have a feel to them that's outside of time.  It's our tradition, just the three of us -- family night."

My comments: I swallowed this whole, reading it in less than a day. It’s the second science-fiction I’ve read recently and I enjoyed it almost as much as the first. Couldn’t put it down. I don’t understand even the teeniest tiniest corner of quantum physics, and there is one place near the end that I still can’t quite wrap my mind around - but it doesn’t matter when it comes to the enjoyment of this thriller. It was really good.

Goodreads synopsis: “Are you happy with your life?” 
          Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. 
          Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. 
          Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.” 
          In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
          Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.
          From the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy, Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.