Vacation Reading
One of the things vacation has always meant to me was time to luxuriate in reading, and this last week was no different.
I took with me three books and finished them all.
Nina LaCour's Everything Leads to You was utterly and completely wonderful. I loved the world she created (indie films in Hollywood, with ties to the past) and her characters and I especially loved the various relationships (friends, lovers, shifting relationships). My only problem with the novel was that it ended and I had to leave that world. I suspect I'll be back.
The world Sarah Combs created in Breakfast Served Anytime was equally vivid, although it felt familiar in some ways because it was a summer "geek camp" on a college campus, not unlike the CTY camp my daughter attended for several summers. This was not a typical YA novel in many ways, but then, the characters weren't typical either. My favorite aspect of Combs's novel was how grounded it was in Kentucky, whether the issue was getting kids to want to attend college there instead of seeing the world, or the coal as a source of prosperity or environmental degredation, or city vs. rural. Many of the issues also come up in Vermont, but with slightly different twists (substitute wind turbines for coal) and the young adult perspective on them felt quite accurate.
Nova Ren Suma's Imaginary Girls was the third novel up. It says so much about this novel that I, who am not particularly close to my sister, totally bought into the relationship. I'm not a great spooky story reader, but I loved this one. In some ways, perhaps because the setting is somewhat similar, it reminded me of Jennifer Donnelly's debut, A Northern Light. There is something about flooded towns, too.
We had a week's vacation, and I was finished with the books I brought by day four. Luckily for me it rained on day five, and we visited a book barn. There I found a book I'd been wanting to re-read for a number of years--Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle, which I enjoyed so much when I read it as an undergraduate. Of course, after thirty-five years, I'm noticing different things, but it's no less enjoyable, particularly for the way she talks about writing "costume Gothics." There are some similarities to Atwood's later novel Cat's Eye.
And now I'm home, with a whole stack of library books before me, as well as a writing project (picture book) to tackle.
What have you been reading lately?