Doctor Sleep and Other January Reads

I finished 13 books in January:

Isaac Newton: Discovering Laws that Govern the Universe by Michael White
A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne (ARC)
The Call by Peader O’Guilin
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (reread)
Isaac Newton by James Gleick
Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
Albert Einstein by Frieda Wishinsky
Renegades by Marissa Meyer (audiobook)
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J Maas
Albert Einstein: The Miracle Mind by Tabatha Yeatts
Drive by Daniel H Pink
Crash & Burn by Lisa Gardner (audiobook)
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

My favorite read of the month was Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. Sequels can be a tricksy thing. Sometimes they feel like a warmed-up, left-over version of the original story. Sometimes they feel like a bridge that only exists to move a reader into a third book.

Doctor Sleep was neither of these. 

While part of the story returns to the site of the Overlook Hotel, the story itself barely skims along the surface of The Shining, following Danny (the child in The Shining) as an adult. It has been a long time since I last read The Shining, but I never felt like I was missing anything by not remembering the details.

Doctor Sleep is a story about ghosts, both literal and figurative. We all have them. Some of us ignore them. Some of us face them and chase them away. Some of us, like Danny, cram them into a box, shove them into a dark corner, and try to forget that they are waiting for us to deal with them. Like Danny, we don’t expect them to come back to help us. We know that they are only waiting in the dark to pop out and hurt us.

Woven throughout this mist of ghosts are a slew of other themes. The idea of family, both genetic and chosen, both for the good guy and the baddies, is prominent. The importance of the past, especially a person’s worst moment, echoes throughout. Hidden potential, the kind that we keep secret to protect others or keep them from judging us, runs through as well.

I went into this book thinking that it was a book 2 of 3. (I was wrong, it is book 2 of 2. At least for now….) Based on that, my expectations were relatively low (see my sequel thoughts above). I was pleasantly surprised by the complete feel of the story. By the end of the book, I felt like Danny’s story was whole. I would not be surprised, though, if King decides to go back to this world.

After all, there is a young girl in Doctor Sleep. A young girl with the shining. Just like Danny.