So far, it’s good. It’s about a girl, Laurel, who one day discovers a plant growing out of her back and learns that she’s a faerie. It can be a little slow at times, and the characters are somewhat flat and unflawed, but apparently this is the first in a four-book series, so maybe things will get more complicated in future books. Right now it’s a lot of exposition and explaining what a faerie is, etc.

All in all, not bad. An easy read and entertaining as well.

The truth is, I’m not really reading anything at this very moment! I finished The Lost Symbol yesterday evening and haven’t picked anything else up. I definitely have a pile of books staring me down, though.

I’m planning on starting The First Five Pages this week. As for non-craft books, I have Wings by Aprilynne Pike waiting for me at the library! I’m pretty excited for that.

Any suggestions for what I should pick up after that?

(Photo by OUCHcharley)

One of the books I picked up is the first one in Meg Cabot’s 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU series, When Lightning Strikes. It’s about a girl, Jess, who is struck by lightning and, instead of dying or suffering really horrible consequences, she gets the ability to know where missing children are. She wakes up the day after the strike knowing where two kids she’d seen on the back of the milk carton were. And it keeps happening everyday.

Like most Meg Cabot books (not that I’ve read all of them by a long shot—did you know that she’s published over fifty books in eleven years? That’s over four books a year!), it’s a light and breezy read. Jess is a likable character and the plot unfolds really quickly. The story has taken some unexpected turns, which I really like. It keeps me on my toes.

I’m not sure if I’ll read the rest of the series (there are four more after this one). I picked up a few other superhero-ish books that I’ll get to first, not to mention the craft books I wrote about yesterday. But if you’re looking for a quick read about a girl who gets a superpower, this one is pretty good.

In August, I took a trip to the Finger Lakes and stopped by the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls. I had just finished reading AVM and the book A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances caught my eye. I splurged on it and it was a fascinating read.

So, to continue the parade of food-related books this year, I am now embarking on Julie and Julia. I really like it. A lot of people have said that the character of Julie in the book is unsympathetic, annoying, etc. (Seriously, google “Julie Powell annoying” and you’ll get almost 13,000 results.) But I think she’s brash and unapologetic, two qualities I really admire. You don’t like her blog? I doubt she really cares. She’s doing it for the love of the thing, for the feeling she gets when she connects with Julia Child’s recipes.

She’s also hilarious and really messed up. I just read the scene in the book (spoiler alert! I guess!) where she’s pretending to be the killer from Silence of the Lambs with the pig skin. Let me tell you about the first time I watched Silence of the Lambs: I was about 14 years old, babysitting for three kids, the oldest of whom was maybe ten. After putting the two younger kids to bed, my charge suggested that we watch Silence of the Lambs because her parents said it was a really good movie. I didn’t know anything about it and it had been taped from television (remember when people did that?), so I couldn’t consult the tape cover for guidance. I didn’t even have an MPAA rating to go off of. (This was before the ubiquity of the Internet, when I could have typed “Silence of the Lambs” into imdb and known within five seconds that this was not a movie I should allow my ten-year-old babysitting charge to watch.)

So I agreed. And then she and I spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch under a ratty afghan, too terrified to move or speak. Somehow, I couldn’t turn it off. But I should never have turned it on in the first place.

Wow, how did I get to Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins? Anyway, all this is a longwinded way of saying: I like Julie and Julia, the book. When it hits the cheap theatres or Netflix, I’ll probably see and like Julie and Julia, the movie. Fin.