Brain Freeze

I'm not sure what it is, but I can't get my brain around any of the big stuff. I've read a lot of YA lately, and I'd been feeling like I should look for something meatier. But I can't seem to keep any of it in my line of sight. I can't read the Jodi Picoult (there was in interesting article in the Times about her, thank you Linden, and I'll have more to say about that tomorrow), fine. But I had to put down The Book of Night Women, which I had really wanted to read after hearing so much about it on NPR a few months ago. But the dialect was just hitting me too hard--it required real focus to read, because every time you picked it up, you had to get back into a very specific dialect. I do too much of my reading in one page spurts for that.

Somehow, though the YA stuff keeps me coming back. I'm not usually embarrassed about that, but right now I'm feeling a little like I've dropped the ball because of this. I'm going to push that aside, though, and just be excited that I have the next Bloody Jack book, In the Belly of the Bloodhound, and Margaret Peterson Haddix's Among the Hidden. I gave up on her Double Identity when I figured out the plot twist on page seven; I assume there's more to it than the twist, but I need to keep moving forward right now. I got New Moon, too, for some godawful reason--mostly because there's usually a long wait and there it was on the shelf. I just finished Bed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton, which was such sweet fun.

Somehow, in the midst of all this, I am very much enjoying The Nine. It'll take me a long time to finish, since I only read about five pages a day, but it's really interesting and dense with information. It's always fun when a nonfiction book has worldbuilding to do.

I had a bunch of other things to say, but my mind is all over the place. Another time, then.