Sunday, April 21, 2013

Weekly reads

Allergies are trying to murder me. All of these little pollens must have congergated outside my window and had some sort of Mel Gibson Patriot-esque speech and thusly charged, full of spirit and ideals, directly at me. I'm losing this battle- I'm in full on British retreat mode and am in bed at 11 in the morning alternating crocheting and being despondent. That's what that extremely poorly lit picture of Tazo is suppose to represent.
That being said, here's what I'm reading this week.




The Host has been on my reading list since it was published. I'm going to be upfront with you I read the beginning of the Twilight series while I was in high school and was obsessed with it. It was a comfortable series to read if that makes sense. It stirred emotion in me, it contained a lot of detail and it wasn't challenging. However, I went back to read it after the first movie came out and was sorely disappointed. It was predictable, forced and wooden. By the fourth book I was over Stephanie Myers' writing. Even thought I had people tell me The Host was different, was better even I was just not interested.
Well, I finished The Mists of Avalon (review to be posted hopefully this week) and found that I was totally emotionally tapped out. Not wanting to lose my reading momentum (after I finished American Gods I don't think I read anything of substance for 3 months) I looked for a non-challenging book. Since the movie is coming out, or is out I haven't really paid attention, it's back on my radar.
Right now, I'm about 12 chapters in and I'm uncommitted. The parts that don't have to deal with romance are intriguing. Myers is capable of writing to distinct female leads who are opposite but not boring when they stand alone. That's all fine but her romantic scenes are just odd. Melanie, her strong survivalist character turns into Bella Swan. Seriously, you could swap the scenes out of either book and not miss a beat.
I know I'm not so far in on this book that I should just give up on it but the beginning of it was so far from the two dimensional characters of the Twilight series that my hopes seemed too high for the other aspects of the book.

I joined a classic reading group on Goodreads last summer after I read Little Women and decided that I needed to read more classics. I took a break after Anna Karenina but got back into it this month. I've never heard of Rebecca before now and every time I mention it too my mom she has the same reaction. She'll look at me for a minute as though she's remembering then she'll say "That book was just really weird." She's seriously done that at least three times. So of course I have to read it!
I just finished chapter 9 last night and so far I'm really enjoying it. I've read one other gothic romance in my life and I don't remember a thing about it except I thought it was totally ridiculous. The only I read was written in the seventies and had plenty of sexy encounters. Rebecca was written in 1938 and is so far devoid of sexy encounters but full of creepily emotionally charged ones between the heroine (at least I think that's what they would call the main character that has no name) and the housekeeper. It's totally weird and ridiculous and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I'm surprised by how easy the writing was to follow and I quickly got sucked into the rhythm of the story. I get a feeling that story doesn't end well and even though I'd rather read something with a happy ending right now the story line is engaging enough to keep me intrigued.
Well I'm going to go back to my crocheting and wondering if a nap would help kill this headache that's not letting go no matter how much medication I threaten it with.

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