In Between Time

Sigh. I hate being in between books. I finished Austenland, which was fun but slight, and checked out a few new library books, but I'm not into anything, and I'm not really getting into what I try.

I grabbed Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear, the next Maisie Dobbs book, which I'm pretty excited about. I read somewhere that it goes a little more into Maisie's solitude, which sounds like an important part of her life that was really only brought into focus at the end of the first book. I also grabbed Enna Burning, because Shannon Hale is my imaginary best friend. She lives in Utah, you know. I wonder if she's a Mormon. I could probably look that up somewhere.

But, I have multiple renewals sitting on the shelf, and I need to read some of these books in the next five days or so. Example: Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver (a woman! named Lionel! I can't get over that, like I'm seven and never heard of such a thing), author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a fascinating and disturbing book that I highly recommend. In the latter, the somewhat unappealing characters were made up for by the fascinating story. In Post-Birthday, though, I'm just having trouble getting into what seems like a slight story. I know it's going to get gimmicky, and possibly interesting, when the plotlines split to follow two possible outcomes of the scene I'm about to read, but I can't even make it that far. And I'm upset because I think it might be worth it.

Then there's The Rebel Angels by Libba Bray, not to be confused with the book of the same title by Robertson Davies, which I read and which I remember as being really interesting, if somewhat illustrative of old men's fantasies of brilliant women whipping off their academic robes to reveal their sexiness. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, Libba Bray. I only liked A Great and Terrible Beauty, the first in her series of fantasy novels, but I've had a hankering for a British girls' boarding school story, and here one appeared for me. But somehow I've renewed twice without reading. So the time has come to put up or shut up, and we'll see what comes of that.

I also have a stack of my own books that I want to read. But I'm really chipping away a the library books--I checked out two, but I have three waiting to be returned, which will leave me with a total of five checked out (not counting audiobooks, because they do not take reading time--they have their own category. I Am America: And So Can You! for the record). This is an improvement over the eight at last count. I really think I'm getting better....