Still Reading

I feel like I've been reading Company of Fools forever. I kind of have--not forever, but I've had it for months. I renewed it as long as I could, returned it, checked out another copy, and renewed that until it's due next week. And I'm still just over halfway done. It's not that it's a hard read, but it's very dense, and very emotionally dense. It's a road trip book, I guess, kind of. Across England, during the plague. It's grim and mysterious and fantastic and really quite lovely. I often have to put it down after only a few pages to digest what just happened. It's a long-term book, I'd say--everything unfolds very gradually, and it's incredibly rich and layered because of that.

The story is about a group of travelers who happen together and are trying to find a place to spend the winter, safe from the plague that is spreading quickly across the country. So far they haven't, and they're still on the road. It's an amazing portrait of the time--musicians, relic-sellers, storytellers, a painter, a midwife. I wish I had more time to read it. I might just have to return it and check it out yet again, just to keep going.

Sadly, this means my count for the month is low. I'm also sort of reading Island of Lost Girls, by Jennifer McMahon, which appears to be another not-bad book from the author of Promise Not to Tell. I think I'll like this one better, having read the first one and knowing that yes, this is the kind of author whose ghosts are real and whose murderers are one of the many potential suspects we meet along the way.

I'm also trying to get into Forest Born, the new Shannon Hale. It's just that Company of Liars has me so caught up, I don't have time for other books.

And, for the record, I'm right on track with my word count--15,300, shooting for 17,000 by the end of today. It's really awful, guys. Really.

I just got a sense of deja vu, and now I have the feeling that this post is basically the exact same post I wrote a week ago, since I'm reading the same books and all. But the baby's crying, so I'm going to post it anyway and hope you'll all forgive me. I'm planning a Personal Library Renaissance for December, so that'll be good for a laugh, right?