Then suddenly, last Saturday night, I remembered that I love reading. In the next eighteen hours I read three whole books and started a fourth. (It helped that it was a weekend and there was a daddy home from work for Eleanor to pester, which left me much more reading time than usual during the day!)
I think what helped me break through my rut was that I finally got to Eleanor and Park, which was really good, but rather sad. The fact that it was good make me want to keep reading good books. The fact that it had some tragic moments made me want to read something light/ happy to counteract it.
So here are some brief reviews of what I read last weekend:
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. Star-crossed teenage love, set in 1986, I thought this book was almost worth all the hype. I was adoring it, and would've given it 5 stars, but I didn't love the understated ending. After all the drama that Park and Eleanor went through, I wanted something more emphatic. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer. I wanted to stay in the romantic vein; but with more laughter. So I turned to my favorite author, and re-read one of hers that I haven't read in years. Deborah Grantham is a spunky heroine, who's not afraid to stand up to the rich Mr. Ravenscar, even though she's only "faro's daughter" (aka she helps her aunt run a gambling house - decidedly not something that single women of high class normally did). Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
The Parfit Knight by Juliet Blythe. Juliet Blythe is not a particularly original author. She was clearly an avid Heyer reader, and any other Heyer addict will recognize minor characters and bits of dialogue that she mish-mashes into her books. Her two main characters in The Parfit Knight are original though - and I love that the heroine is blind, it makes this book just enough different than a typical Regency romance. Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Dead Souls by Ian Rankin. Four years ago I blitzed through books 1-9 in the Rebus series, and then stalled out about 40 pages into this one. I decided that Rebus needed another chance - but I'm struggling with it again. It's partly that I want to smack Rebus upside his stubborn head, and make him quit pushing away the few people who still love him, and partly that the crime is related to child molestation... which is never easy to read about. We'll see if I manage to actually finish it this time.
Have YOU been reading much lately?
