Catching up on some reading

I've been in a little reading rut of late - or to be more accurate, a lack of reading rut. Not sure what happened, but for a while, nothing seemed interesting. After the disaster that was Dan Brown I just couldn't bear to pick up a book. Even my old standbys were less than appealing. Happily that seems to have passed.

When I caught 84 Charing Cross Road on TV, it occurred to me that I had never actually read the book on which it was based. Since I was online the very next night ordering school books, I popped it and the sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, into my shopping cart for a little fun as well. These are tiny books - under 150 pages each - and so only occupy an hour or thereabouts. But oh! What fantastic reading they provide. 84 Charing Cross Road reads almost exactly like the movie - to the point that you could, were you of the mind to, hear Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft reading along with you. When they say the movie is based on the book, they do not joke - I think there were, perhaps, two letters left out of the movie and maybe two additional scenes added in (and even those were mentioned in the book - which is just a collection of the actual letters - the movie just chose to act them out, show instead of tell.)

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is a follow on and is Helene Hanff's travel journal when she does, at last, make it to London. Frank has long since passed, though she meets up with his widow and eldest daughter and makes many other friends while she is there. It's a delightful tale that sucks you in and leaves you craving just a few more pages at the end, in much the same way that Helene craves just a few more days in London when at last it's time for her to go home.

A bit ago (just prior to the whole rut thing) at the recommendation of Jen, I zipped through Jonathan Kellerman's Billy Straight. I enjoyed it thoroughly and so decided to give his primary series, the Alex Delaware books, a shot. Imagining that with a long-running series revolving around one character I would be best off starting at the beginning, I grabbed When the Bough Breaks and Blood Test when last Tim and I were at Borders.

When the Bough Breaks is a tough read. It's not the writing or the characters - those are all wonderful - but the subject. Mysteries revolving around sexual predators are tough. Given that Billy Straight incorporated this theme, I'm guessing it's going to be part of most of the books; this is seconded by the fact that Dr. Delaware is a child psychologist. Thankfully he doesn't go into gory details of the abuse, but even knowing that these stories are not a huge jump into fiction that would never happen but could very well have been ripped from the headlines of whatever paper you read is enough to turn your stomach. Getting beyond that (if you can), the book is excellent.

Blood Test was considerably easier to read, though the nasty gorgan head of childhood sexual abuse did once again rise. This investigation circles around trying to encourage parents to treat their son for cancer and spirals down into small town corruption and family secrets. I have to say that while I suspected some of the resolution from the instant one character entered, other parts hit me from behind. I love it when things happen that you don't see coming.

I'm now delving into Ireland by Frank Delaney. I'm a tad ashamed to say I received this for my birthday in February and am only now popping it up to the top of my list. Part of this (shame, shame, shame on me) is because it's a hardcover. I dislike hardcovers. My hands are too small or something, they're just hard to hold, I can't curl up with them easily on the couch, and so on and so forth. Cheese? Yes, thanks! So, I'm only a few chapters in, but already I'm adoring it. I'll do a proper review once I've finished it, but I'm very glad that mom gave it to me and doubly annoyed with myself for not having tackled the whole hardcover issue sooner.

I will also say that I was a teensy bit scared that it would be more like The Princes of Ireland, which I read earlier this year and mostly enjoyed, though I found the format hard to follow. It's a bit Faulkner-esque or Mitchner-esque (neither of whom reside on my "authors who I love to read" list). While no, it's not stream of consciousness, it bops from one era to the next to the next, with little to no continuity of character, and I just really longed to have a thread of continuity so I could see that this was the great-great-whatever of so-and-so who had done such-and-such earlier on in the book. Without that, well, it read a bit too much like a history book...and I don't care much for history if it's not deeply rooted in fiction. That said, I may still have to read The Rebels of Ireland. After all, can you really read too many books about or taking place in Ireland?

Beyond all that, it's good to be back in a reading place again. The droughts don't come often, but when they do, I mourn just a little.