Current Reading Journal

Not so much fiber content today. There is knitting happening but it's of the super-secret variety. Santa's workshop and all that.

It's a good day to trot out the books. So here's what I've been reading.

I've just finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It's one of those books you finish and then the wheels of the old brain start turning. You find yourself saying, "Wait a minute!" and looking back through it to see just how this or that incident played out. This or that incident is suddenly Important. Clues have been meticulously laid and doofus that I am, I missed most of them. But the Aha! moment was well worth all the head-scratching.

This book is densely written. The voice is that of a very bright but somewhat world-weary teenager, Blue Van Meer, daughter of an even more world-weary university professor who's devoted to his daughter but clearly has his own agenda. He has fed his daughter books, books, books throughout their life on the road as he bounced from teaching job to teaching job. She quotes great books, she talks in footnotes, she throws around some exasperating and overblown metaphors, she digresses expansively.

It seemed to be playing out as a fairly typical coming-of-age story of a brainy kid, and I was tempted to give up on it. But then events took a turn and I was hooked to the finish. Then, like I said, I was looking back through the book to see what I missed the first time through.

And I was understanding why the story was told as it was. An unusually bright but very isolated girl, self-absorbed as only a very bright teenager can be, might just stretch the metaphor usage to the reader's breaking point when writing about her own life. As the story ends, Blue is figuring out what's been going on but she's still a kid and the reader sees more than Blue does about her situation.

If you enjoy words and wordplay, dive in. And give this one a chance--the actual story being told is barely apparent in the first half of the book.

And this is the reading that's currently on deck. Half of this pile is my cousin Jane's fault--whenever I spend a day with her, the subject usually turns to books at some point. She gives me ideas and suddenly I'm swamped with things I HAVE to read. Thanks a lot, Jane!

The top book is Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside--not such a good picture.