It's June 1st and I didn't make it to 50. I do have #47 and #48 though. I slacked off a little the last couple of days. Evening summer league swim team practice takes a big chunk out of my available time. *sigh*

Anyway, it got hot, so I wanted some fun reading. #47 is a beach book by the queen of beach books. Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts. So, she has a template of 3 leading men and reuses them. They work. If it ain't broke...

#48 is All American Girl by Meg Cabot. I'm not sure if I like them quite as much as her Princess Diary series, but still engaging and entertaining. I'm currently reading the sequel.

Ah, the beauties of a holiday weekend. You can be more indolent and not feel too terribly guilty about it. Of course, it also helps that we're in rerun season now.

Anyway, #46 is The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett. I enjoyed Bel Canto, but I think I prefer this one. A lovely musing on self-invention, self-definition and the powers of love both as a force for creation and for destruction. The dream sections were my favorite. Achingly lovely. I'd recommend it.

Can I hit 50 before June 1st? Only the Shadow knows....

I'm kind of a sucker for parallel timeline stories, so this one worked for me. #45 is The Plague Tales by Ann Benson. Parallel stories of a medieval Jewish doctor during the plague years and a doctor from an indeterminate, but not far in the future America who travels to England and inadvertantly digs up a sample of that same medieval plague strain. In this future, massive unnamed disease outbreaks have caused a reordering of global societies. I liked the book overall, but found the medieval sections to be much more engrossing.

Speaking of medieval, I was at a fanfic site obviously frequented by the very young and saw a story summary wherein the author used "midevil" to describe the period. Made me literally laugh out loud.

#44 is The River King by Alice Hoffman. I haven't read a lot of her work and I liked this. There's definitely a melancholy undercurrent, but the book is ultimately hopeful. Her writing is atmospheric and she draws memorable characters. I may check out some of her other writings.

Quick book update.

#42 Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher. The latest intallment in the Harry Dresden universe. More magical mayhem in Chicago with a war in Faerie thrown in for good measure. Not quite as good as previous books, but still entertaining reading.

#43 is a favorite from my formative years. The Wishing Star by Norma Johnston. A young girl's coming of age story set in a small New England town at the turn of the century. I haven't reread this one literally in years and I still love it.

Only 7 more to go to fulfill the pledge.

#40 is Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler. The writing was fine, but I never connected deeply with the characters. I haven't read any Tyler since The Accidental Tourist years ago and I'm beginning to think that her brand of quirky just doesn't jive with mine.

#41 was Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life : Or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child by Faulkner Fox. While I often found the author not particularly likeable, this was an occasionally gripping look at a modern woman's viewpoint on being a wife and mother and how that fits with feminist sensibilities. I think that she might have benefited from some good mood stabilizers at certain points of her journey, but that's just me. I doubt Betty Boop had this much angst about gender roles and equality. ;)

Bad headache on and off for the last three days, so this will be brief.

#37 Princess in Waiting by Meg Cabot.

#38 The Mercy Room by Gilles Rozier.

#39 Princess in Pink by Meg Cabot.

The first and third were fun and breezy. Just what I needed while in the throes of a headache. I really enjoy Cabot's supple use of pop culture. Mia's list of the ten best shows on television with commentary by Lilly cracks me up. The second was an odd little book about a French teacher of German language and literature in occupied France who hides a young Jewish soldier in the cellar of his/her house and ends up involved in a passionate affair with the man. The reader never knows for sure if the central figure is a man or a woman. Atmospheric and a somewhat melancholy rumination on what it means to be complicit.

I really liked today's entry. #36 is Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto. This is a collection of short stories, which I'm normally not hugely enamored of, all loosely built around first person narrators finding faith and hope. I've read and loved other things by Banana (especially Kitchen) and this was no exception. It's ironic, because the same things that I viewed as negatives in reference to Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, particularly the narrative structure or lack thereof, worked here. Yoshimoto's work is often dreamlike and ephemeral, but rather than seeming unfinished as in Balzac it instead seems more like a diaphanous bubble enclosing a brief snapshot of a world. This is one example of a translated work that doesn't make me think that something essential has been lost to the reader. Check her out if you haven't. I don't think that you'll be disappointed.

So, I got my first official warning at TWOP today. I violated a posting rule (I guess I should have read the FAQ after all) and was told that the tone of my post was "snotty". Just out of idle curiosity, how many warning before they ban you? I'd always heard that the site had wildly partisan attitudes and that disagreeing with the majority got you in trouble and I guess it's true.

We've also got another book update. #35 is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. A very wispy, ephemeral book that somehow lacked narrative cohesion. I enjoyed what there was of it, but kept expecting there to be more. It's almost as if this was a series of chunks taken out of a larger work and stitched together. I think I would have preferred the extended version. I always wonder how much is lost when a book is translated and this one did nothing to alleviate the fear that the answer is "a lot".

Number 34 on our hit parade is The Grand Tour: Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. The sequel to Sorcery and Cecilia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot.... Entertaining, but sadly not quite as engaging as the previous. J liked it quite a bit though.

I'm counting down the hours until tomorrow night. Season finales of GG *and* VM. I'll be watching GG with J and then heading out to watch Tivo'd VM with friends on the big screen. I can't wait! I wonder what snacks would be appropriate to take. Decisions, decisions.