Summer Reading

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I have been reading, just no time to post. Until now! Let's see. I started Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. "Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living can "read" fictional characters to life when one of those character abducts them and tries to force him into service." This kind of reminds me of a Jasper Fforde for kids, but I only got about 50 pages into the the book before I returned it to the library. Not for a lack of interest. It's a fairly long book and I think I was overwhelmed with too many fun books to read this summer. I think this book will be more of a winter book for me. I see it as more of a curl up with a blanket and a nice cup of cocoa type book. Funke has planned a trilogy with the second one, Inkspell, already out. Both books have received excellent reviews. Inkheart: The Movie is in production now, and it seems the third book in the trilogy, Inkdeath will be out January 2008. She also has a number of other juvenile fiction books out that all sound very good. So to those mourning the end of the Harry Potter books, perhaps you might be mildly satisfied with Funke.

I enjoyed another Alexander McCall Smith No. 1 Ladies Detective Series book, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies. I believe its number 6 in the series. I seem to like reading these books in the summer. In fact, I think I've read all of them in the summer. Perhaps its the African setting. It's hot there, its hot here. Who knows. I enjoyed this installment and am looking forward to getting to Blue Shoes and Happiness before the summer is over.

Although I was unable to attend, our book club pick for June was The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Allison reviewed this book earlier in the year and loved it. I was a little more reserved with my feelings. For the first half of the book, all I could think about was Flowers in the Attic. I'm not sure why. It just felt that way to me. Not that that's a bad thing. I loved Flowers in the Attic as a teenager. I did enjoy it a bit more in the second half once I started figuring out where the story was going. This one was just a little difficult for me to get into. I was told the book club all loved it though. So perhaps I was just a bit to hard on this book. It was well written and the characters very developed.