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Missed my stop
Jul. 12th, 2007 08:51 pmI missed my stop on the Megan McCafferty train. Should've gotten off the ride after Second Helpings, but no, I read Charmed Thirds. Well, more I tried to read it and couldn't finish it. It's hard for any writer, IMO, to take a character and transition from YA to adulthood, and I wasn't impressed with Jessica Darling as an adult or semi-adult in TC. So when I saw the ad in my inbox for her upcoming Fourth Coming, I skimmed the information (32% off at Amazon), then deleted it. Nope, not doing it.
Another reader/writer train that I haven't been able to get on is the lurve train for Barbara Samuels-Ruth Wind, which I've blogged about before. Coming off a string of very good books, I decided to give her one last try, and picked up Bed of Spices, an historical that is widely held to be her best work and an amazing piece of fiction. Meh. I had issues with the heroine, who struck me as Mary Sue-ish (everyone loves her! she's a healer! she knows best!) and where I thought the story was going with twin-thing. Plus, knowing that the plague is coming and what happens to Jews (the hero is Jewish) during plague-time, I had a hard time imagining any sort of HEA. DNF. Anyone want a battered copy of Bed of Spices?
Read of review of a nonfiction book on the evolution of food, A Movable Feast: Ten Millenia of Food Globalization by Kenneth F. Kiple, that sounds very interesting. On my TBB list now.
Unrelated to books: on the way home tonight, I saw six cars trying to back down the entrance ramp to I-895. Not only did they have to make it to the bottom of the ramp without causing a collision, but that ramp is set in the 45 degree angle of a busy intersection, so they had to wait until the intersection cleared before redirecting anywhere. One at a time. That gives me heartburn; Poppop (truckdriver) told me once that he saw more people killed that way than in "regular" crashes.
Another reader/writer train that I haven't been able to get on is the lurve train for Barbara Samuels-Ruth Wind, which I've blogged about before. Coming off a string of very good books, I decided to give her one last try, and picked up Bed of Spices, an historical that is widely held to be her best work and an amazing piece of fiction. Meh. I had issues with the heroine, who struck me as Mary Sue-ish (everyone loves her! she's a healer! she knows best!) and where I thought the story was going with twin-thing. Plus, knowing that the plague is coming and what happens to Jews (the hero is Jewish) during plague-time, I had a hard time imagining any sort of HEA. DNF. Anyone want a battered copy of Bed of Spices?
Read of review of a nonfiction book on the evolution of food, A Movable Feast: Ten Millenia of Food Globalization by Kenneth F. Kiple, that sounds very interesting. On my TBB list now.
Unrelated to books: on the way home tonight, I saw six cars trying to back down the entrance ramp to I-895. Not only did they have to make it to the bottom of the ramp without causing a collision, but that ramp is set in the 45 degree angle of a busy intersection, so they had to wait until the intersection cleared before redirecting anywhere. One at a time. That gives me heartburn; Poppop (truckdriver) told me once that he saw more people killed that way than in "regular" crashes.
