You may have noticed by now that May was a pretty busy time for me. The entire month felt pretty much like finals week in college, and I haven’t felt that way in, well, two years. It was not a happy feeling, and it reminded me how glad I am to be grownup now and out of school. Anyway, here’s hoping that June will be much more stress-free.
I though I’d kick off this month by telling you a little bit about what I’ve been reading, since you haven’t been privy to a book review recently. Yes, even through all this business of editing, I’ve managed to get a couple of books read. It was either read a few hours each week or watch endless hours of something completely nerdy on Netflix.
After finishing the abysmal Dracula, I took a step a century forward to see how the vampire legend has progressed into modern writing. No, I didn’t read Twilight (which, by the way, I have read the first book and read the summaries of the others on Wikipedia, and joyfully follow along with the other books with Dana at Reasoning with Vampires). I picked up Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. I’ve read the other two books in this series before, but actually, it’s a lot more fun after reading Dracula, because before I was like “They can turn to mist? That’s retarded.” Now I know that Dracula actually could turn to mist and into a bat and all that. Anyway, the storyline is…interesting. I’m still not really sure if I would recommend it. It made me laugh, a lot, but the character development was less than optimal and the parts that were written by Abby were just annoying. But then, Christopher Moore isn’t your typical writer, so I can’t apply normal guidelines to his works. Bite Me follows the night lives of Jody and Tommy, two newly turned vampires who are in love, their minion, Abby Von Normal, and her boyfriend, Foo Dog. If you haven’t read the other two books, Abby sums up what happened in the first chapter so you can read this one by itself if you want to. It’s hard to explain everything else, but let me end with this: there is a giant blood-sucking cat involved. And it’s nothing like Twilight.
My next book was Persona Non Grata, also third in a series. You can read about the other two books here and here. Ruth Downie continues the misadventures of Gaius Petrius Ruso in this wonderful absolutely amazing historical mystery. This time Ruso take Tilla to his home country of Gaul, where his multitude of family members clamor around him to solve their problems, monetary and otherwise. And then someone dies.
I’ve recently finished Aaron Pogue‘s Taming Fire, but I’ll wait until the edits are done to tell you about that one.
I’ve said before that I’m reading Outlander for book club at work. That is still true. I’m on page 600. I should be reaching the end soon. So that’s it for now! Sorry for the lack of updates recently!