#2019reading Another book that surprised me in 2019 was Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis". I expected this to be a supernatural novel with elements of horror, and the first half of the book was exactly that, but- strangely- the second half of the book was a series of interconnected short stories that looped back to the first of the book. In fact, Hearts in Atlantis was not so much a novel as a novella with a series of interconnected short stories. Another surprise was there was actually very little supernatural or horror content. In fact, the book was more a meditation on young love, the 1960's, and the collapse of a certain American way of life in the wake of Vietnam. This was perhaps the most surprising element, to see King veer away from his usual plot-heavy writing and get more into literary writing of the kind you might see in a New Yorker short story.