You wonder where I've been? Nowhere. I feel like saying "school suxx!" like I'm a high school sophomore again (though I was never that sophomore; I disapprove of such spelling, I hated exclamation points at that time in my life, and since it was pre-internet, capitalization and misspelling were not yet considered a language of their own). But I don't think school really sucks, so much as the novelty is wearing off. After all, I never claimed to want to go to school. And while I'm pretty psyched about my YA Lit class this summer, Reference is a TON of work--interesting work, but SO much--and I'm having trouble keeping up. And you know how the more you slip behind, the harder it is to keep from slipping more? Yeah, story of my life.
I've also been feeling under the weather, schlumpy and tired for a while. That's not really better. One thing I can say about school, though, is that once I've dragged my butt an hour across town to get here, I end up focused on something, whether it's work or blogging or whatever. It's easier to take on a task than it is at home. This is a lesson to me to spend more time here next week.
To keep up appearances, let me update you on what I've been reading lately. You know, for the record. I finished Birds of a Feather, the second Maisie Dobbs mystery, this morning. It was charming, and I liked it even better than the first one. It did hold back a lot of information (including a mysterious clue that our detective finds but keeps wrapped in a hankie without revealing it to us for about 1/4 of the book), so I'm not sure how that works as a "standard" detective novel, but I like Maisie. She's brusque and impersonal sometimes, but she's so tightly controlled. I wonder if there will be an opening of her character over the series. I also find the details of the WWI aftermath to be really compelling. It takes place 10 years after the war, but it's very much about how the lives of everyone were shaped by the experience. England is a small country, after all.
Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Todd Gilbert, was something I expected to be a self-help book, but was really mass-market psychology. (I won't call it "pop psychology" because I think there are demeaning connotations there, but really it's psychology intended for a popular readership, so there you have it.) Anyway, it's about how we spend our whole lives deciding what we think will make us happy and working toward it, and we're usually wrong, not equipped to make the decision anyway, and it doesn't matter because where we end up is often what we make of it. If nothing else, it'll make you feel somewhat better about not knowing what you're doing with your life.
Ellen Emerson White, author of the ever-popular President's Daughter series and one of my favorites, Life Without Friends, preceded the latter book with her first novel, Friends for Life. It's the backstory to LWF, though I now realize that it was written first. It's okay--it definitely suffers from the "thin excuse not to go to the police" problem that a lot of simple thrillers fall into, but for a first novel written by a college senior, I am nothing but envious. Her voice was definitely there, and a lot of the things she explores in her characters--inability to ask for what you need, lonliness held in check by pride--but she improved greatly over time.
Now I'm reading Enna Burning, by Shannon Hale. I just started in on the train, so I have nothing to report, except that, as I've said, I like Shannon Hale's books.
Class will begin soon, so I'm on my merry way. I forgot to bring an apple for my snack, but I think I have some CheezIts. Wish me luck.
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