Huffington Magazine Issue 5 | Page 83

Exit BOOKS HUFFINGTON 07.15.12 Six Books In Search Of A Vacation We may drag our bodies on vacation, but our brains also need their own escape from the every day. But what should you read, and during what part of your holiday? Here’s Huffington’s perfect recipe of sun, sea, sand and something to read that’s not email, PowerPoint slides or memos from the boss. — By Andrew Losowsky Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn While you wait for your flight to be called, you begin Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown). And you can’t put it down. You barely notice as you board the plane, hooked by Flynn’s dramatic psychological twists. The flight is a blur. You finish the book as the plane lands, and demand that your partner read it right away, so you can discuss the ending. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green You arrive at your hotel, unpack your bags and head to the beach with a copy of The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (Dutton Juvenile). The story is heartbreaking and hilarious, and as you drift in and out of a nap you wonder if the two people you can hear laughing together near the surf are characters Hazel and Augustus, playing together in the sand as they ponder the fundamental questions of life. Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman Later that afternoon, you read a couple of short stories from Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman (Scribner), a debut collection of nature-inspired stories that veer artfully between the tender and the fantastical. You imagine that the cries of the seagulls are in fact mating calls of rare birds nestling in the backwoods of North Carolina.