This Thanksgiving holiday week should have been the perfect time to relax and catch up on housework, but I've come down with a nasty cold so am forced to stay in bed and read...which is what I secretly wanted to do with my time off, anyway. I finished reading Molly Ringwald's When It Happens To You yesterday, it was delightful! It's a novel-in-stories, and while I found the first few stories a little summary-heavy, I suppose that's a function of the literary fiction genre. By the time I'd hit the book's mid-point, the superfluous summary had either lessened or just didn't bother me anymore, and I was free to enjoy Ringwald's masterful prose. This book is really, REALLY good, and a relatively quick read (especially if you're ravenous for good writing after a bunch of so-so stuff and trapped in bed, like me).
I also put a dent into Justin Cronin's The Twelve, which unexpectedly arrived via Kindle Library Loan. I'd planned to reread the last 50 pages of The Passage before tackling this next installment, but Cronin did a ridiculously good job of encapsulating the previous novel in a faux-Biblical Prologue to quickly bring the reader up to speed and set the stage for this new slice of the story. The Twelve indulges my preference for the first third of The Passage, which deals with a recognizable near-future as a vampire apocalypse descends. The Passage then does a flash-forward that J.J. Abrams would be proud of--leaps ahead in time a few hundred years to a society that, while somewhat interesting, is never quite as compelling as the present-tense dire straits we left behind.The Twelve picks up at this delicious point and moves on, unblinkingly, through horror after horror, and I cannot put it down. *Totally* recommended!
Okay, my chickens--I work next on Saturday, then Monday. Hope you all have wonderful Thanksgivings--I can't wait to hear about them! Holiday love to all,
--P
