It would have been wonderful

Oh, how I slack.

I have just now (well, actually last night) caught up with your (incredibly prolific, damn you) posts from the last three weeks.

It's really putting me off righting my own...which will read something like this:

SRC Update
Right. I finished the second book (Wives and Daughters) back on June 27th and it was just okay. The story was interesting (all about Molly Gibson's life), but I don't think that I enjoyed it. Molly was too much a pushover for me to relate too. She didn't really ever speak up about her feelings or wants, instead, she just let everyone decide things for her. That's not to say she didn't stand up for the people she cared about, because she did, just never really for herself. My other complaint is that the book was never finished, due to the author's untimely death. Granted, I knew that before I started reading the book, but it was still disappointing not to have it "finished". (Her editor/publisher was someone that she corresponded with regularly, so he put in something of a postscript after her death, so at least we get to know how and where she was going to end her novel.)

So yes, book 2 was finished on week 5 (Yea gods, I'm so behind) and I started book 3, "The Beautiful and the Damned" by F.Scott Fitzgerald. And oh, how I despise it. I tried to read it, really. I tried to imagine myself in the '20s, all full of illegal alcohol and idleness....but all it made me do was drink. Or want to drink, depending on where I was reading. Anthony and Gloria were some of the most boring, self-centered, and annoying main characters I've ever tried to read. I managed to get halfway through the book, but on Tuesday, I had to put it down.

Which means that I've got to know read my first alternate..."Paradise Lost". I think.

But in the meantime, I've picked up book 3, "1984" by George Orwell...and book 4, "Animal Farm". Well, I tried to pick up book 4... See, it was a book sale purchase, so I didn't peruse it at the time. I just grabbed it and went...and found out on Wednesday that the first 27 pages were gone. So now I've got to read my second alternate too..."Woman in White". And...jump to book 5 (while reading book 3 still), "The House of Mirth".

Sigh. I so called it. I knew it was going to be like this.

Other readings

Um, have there been any? Oh right...

"Captain Alatriste" was just...okay. Not thrilled like it, at least not how I wanted to be. I'm a big fan of the author, but it seems like every fourth book or so, he writes something that I just can not get into, which disappoints me. However, this is the first book in a series, so I'm thinking I might give the second book a chance. Maybe. I've got a year or so to think about it.

"Skinner's Drift" was also okay. Again, not wowed by it, but it was something of an interesting read, as I've never read anything set in South Africa before. It was written from the point of view both before and after apartheid, again, a subject I haven't read much on. I think that was the most interesting part...the story didn't really grab me either.

And I read the last of "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants" books...which was again, eh. (Is it me?) It ended the trilogy nicely, but I was expecting certain things to happen, which didn't, based on the way the first two books were written. Still, I'm not unhappy with it...and I've heard rumors that they're going to continue the series.

"Black Powder War" was good. (That's right..I'd nearly forgotten I'd read that.) I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two, but we were introduced to a bunch of new characters, including a pack of feral dragons (hee, they were fun). The French seem to be winning the war though, and as an enemy of Teremarie is helping them...well, let's just say that it got almost ugly there. But they live.

As for the library books...I'm giving up the ghost on them. I've returned nearly all of them by this point, and I did little more than scan the titles for most of them. I'm going to implement a new policy once I've gotten through them all. No more than 2 books checked out from the library at a time. This means that I put no more than 2 books on hold at a time and if I have to wait 5 weeks to get a book, so be it. I have more than enough books here to keep me busy. (And I'm really behind on my knitting!)

That's how the post would go, if I was writing it. The SRC forum update would be something similar too...although I might have to flesh it out a bit, explain more why I despised "The Beautiful and the Damned" a bit more.

Which I'm not. Maybe tomorrow I'll write it.

P.S. Grandma is still doing good. Tragically though, the purple is all gone. Sad really.