Library holds all day, baby. I just finished DEMON COPPERHEAD last night, by the way – after reading DAVID COPPERFIELD first as several other commenters advised me to do. I ended up absolutely loving the Dickens and thinking the Kingsolver was just OK, but the most fascinating part of the whole enterprise was seeing how literally and creatively (at different points) BK reinterpreted various characters and plot points of CD’s – and I got the maximum effect of that, since I read them back to back.* If anyone else finds themself in this position, do it, do it! Way bigger than the sum of the parts, and two very ambitious, interesting books.
*Okay TECHNICALLY I took a short breather and read Idra Novey’s TAKE WHAT YOU NEED in the middle for a breather, as it popped up on my library holds in the middle of all this bildungsroman tomfoolery. And so that is my other rec: Go ahead and wait until after the double header, but my goodness, if you’re up for another exploration of the Rust Belt and becoming an artist and so much more, go for TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, which is about a woman who goes back to the hollowed-out town where she grew up because her estranged ex-stepmother died and left her a bunch of mysterious metal sculptures. Its radical empathy is just breathtaking. I read it in two nights, my heart on a high dive the whole time.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717344/take-what-you-need-by-idra-novey/
