R.I.F.

I've read more in the last month than I've read in the last 2 years.  I used to read all the time, and then it just got hard to find the time and then other things took priority.  I'd periodically try to read a book and sometimes I'd get through it and sometimes not. But lately I've been on a tear.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde  It was recommended as a book that "made me think of you." by a couple of people, which always makes me nervous, but I gave it a whirl.  It was fun.  Kind of a Sue Grafton-meets-Douglas Adams thing.  I enjoyed it, but am unlikely to read the others in the series as the heroine just didn't grab me as one I want to spend more time with.  So, I can see why others thought of me, but apparently I need to step up my game.

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett.  It's the penultimate of the Rincewind books in the Discworld series.  I've been reading them to Steve when we're on car trips.  Hilarious.  I love, love, love these books.   Janet the Hinjew mom has been telling me to read them for ages and she was dead-on.  We adore them and see Rincewind as a personal hero.

Is Underground by Joan Aiken.  I've been reading Julianna the Dido series that started a-way back with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, one of my childhood faves.  But I only read the first three as a kid and now there are many more.  A really captivating group of characters and I love to do all the accents when I read.  Reading this and the two previous books left me a bit Britain-soaked, though, so I read...

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.  I've wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail forever, so I really enjoyed his account of his attempt.  It's laugh-out-loud funny as well as really informative.  I learned all sorts of stuff and I'm totally jazzed to hike and camp this summer.

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley.  I actually read a book before the Washington Post review even came out!  I just saw it and picked it up on impluse b/c I loved his Thank You For Smoking and Little Green Men.  Funny guy.  It's a romp as well, very insider-DC.  The premise is that the 20 and 30 somethings get fed up with the Boomers hogging all the resources and come up with a plan to allow them to commit suicide before they become a drain on Social Security.  And yet, funny!  Buckley is great at dialogue, which is critical to me.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani.  I enjoyed it, but not as much as I thought I would.  People go ape for this series.  It IS funny and full of good characters, but they seemed a bit too Northern Exposure Quirky.  And the heroine is one of those women who distances herself from real life with books and wears that as a badge of honor.  I find that annoying.  But I do have the feeling that it's the sort of book in which the characters get into you and hang around and I'll end up reading another one eventually.  It's set in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, so it was fun to see the accent written to sound like one of my Grannies.

Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster.  I picked this one up off the bargain table b/c I liked the title and saw the word "funny" all over the cover.  And while there IS humor, by the end of the first 30 pages, I wanted to find the author and punch her in the throat.  I flipped to a few random points, read a bit and then tossed it in the PBS pile.

I'm currently about 15 pages into Goats by Mark Jude Poirier.  I'll let you know.

ANTM was a lame clip show, although we did finally get to see where that panel-mocking photo came from.  Nothing new, really except my growing love for Natasha.  Shear Genius was fun, even though they eliminated Gay Frodo.  Lost was pretty awesome, as is any episode with lots of Jin and Sun, God's most perfectly constructed humans.