Books!

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things about vacation (and then I promise I won't talk about vacation anymore) is vacation reading. I always use it as an excuse to go on a book-buying spree, and I try never to go on a trip of any significant length without at least four books, and truthfully, five or six is better. (Whoa, long sentence there.)

So with my vacation reading, and one post-vacation splurge read, I feel like I have lots to report.

The book I was most excited to read, and the one I devoured almost as soon as we got off the plane, was Replay, by Ken Grimwood. I have something of an obsession with time-travel novels and short stories; it all started with that damn Christopher Reeve movie, and just keeps going. This book was tons of fun and led to some great vacation conversations. It's about a man who is repeatedly sent back to himself at age 18 to live his life over again; he has full memory each time, so his experience build and build on one another. I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out what I would do in such a situation. Think about it, it's a tough one.

My other reading selections were total vacation fluff. At least they were supposed to be. I made the mistake of picking what looked like a silly little fantasy tale, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story. Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? A story about Cinderella's fairy godmother and her life after Cinderella? Well, it was TOTALLY not HARMLESS at all. Turns out, it wasn't about a fairy godmother at all, and instead was about an elderly woman who has so much guilt over an incident in her youth that she goes crazy, lives a lonely life, and kills herself in the end! Yeah, that was NOT what I wanted out of vacation reading. Sheesh. I know I just spoiled it for you if you were planning on reading it, but I consider it a Public Service Announcement.

The other book I just finished, well, I'm not going to spoil it for you because it's part of a series by a pretty popular writer, and I don't want to put you off the whole series on the off chance that you plan to read it. Let's just say that I picked up what was supposed to be a lighthearted mystery, only to have the main character's husband DIE AT THE END. There's no other way to say it, that just sucked ass. I swear, I think I'm going to write the auther a letter, just to say, "Dude, what the fuck?"

Anyway, since my Spring fluff reading is getting kind of depressing, I think I'll just go ahead and finish that new Joyce Carol Oates novel that I got. You know, the one based on the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder? It should be a real laugh a minute.