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[sillyzilly2k]

Sorry, I'm feeling chatty today.

I think I need a new story. Something to get sucked into. I have this theory that I read like a drug addict--I love the feeling of being swept up into a story, and I continue to seek out that feeling in the books I read. It's pretty rare. Occasionally, I happen upon a Poisonwood Bible or a Practical Magic, or even

Comments

[lulabo]

I've been so behind in my reading lately, it ain't funny. But I recently just went on a Dennis Lehane binge, something like five books in two weeks. I don't know if you're into detective literature, but generally, I'm not, and I went into this series reluctantly. The benefit of having a det lit junkie for a big sister is that she tends to have really good instincts and she doesn't read stuff that's terribly written. I stuck to the Kenzie/Gennaro stories, and man, did they suck me in. A Drink Before the War is the first one, and I liked it, but Darkness, Take My Hand was the first book in a very long time that I couldn't put down and couldn't stop thinking about and when I finished I was just mentally exhausted. After that, there's Sacred, Gone Baby Gone, and Prayers for Rain. The last two are also excellent.

And if you're an Alice Hoffman reader, try The Probable Future or Here On Earth. I love everything she writes, but those stand out in my mind after PM. Ashley Warlick is a little like Hoffman, but less mystic, and absolutely

[sillyzilly2k]

I have mixed feelings about detective fiction. I want to like it, and sometimes I can get into it, but I haven't really embraced it as a genre. In college, I took a class on detective fiction--it was actually a class looking at all fiction through the lens of detective stories (starting with Edgar Allan Poe and Sir A.C. Doyle, and continuing through the hard-boiled stories of the mid-20th century, and ending with all the different "post-modern" detective lit being written today). It was a fun class, and it was really interesting, but I'm not sure I bonded with the literature as much as I'd hoped. Our final project was to turn in an outline and a few chapters of our own detective novel, though, and that was fun.

That said, I'm definitely intrigued by this Dennis LeHane--I'd heard of him before--and may put him on my to-read list for when I finish the HBP. And mmmmm, Alice Hoffman. Everything she writes is so...lush. It's wonderful.