It's Friday! Time for Updates and Booktalk

Yesterday was one of those days. The kind where come about 2 PM you think, well, nothing much is getting done here today and I'm good with that and then all hell breaks loose and the next time you look up from the million things it's like 9 PM. But EXCITING THINGS!! And someday I will spill all the beans.

Amidst all this, the week long landscaping adventure is over and my first thought after the initial 'yeah it looks pretty and I guess it was worth the $' was the thought, "Holy shit, what will the basset-boxer who loves to roll and dig do to all that mulch? Especially the new flower bed that's sort of in one of her old sprinting paths."  Don't tell me, okay?

Finally back to Maggie Stiefvater's Scorpio Races, which I started about a year ago and then put down because of this and that and now picked up again and am loving. It is a slow read -- much slower than any of her other books and certainly slower than Raven Boys and maybe that's why I put it down when I did. But the language and the description is lush and gorgeous and unique and really NO ONE writes like Maggie Stiefvater. So damn good! But so visual in these small, specific ways that you really do have to concentrate on seeing it all. Because every sentence gives you an image of some sort. Brilliant. Damn brilliant. And underneath the beauty is a story of two characters who both want the same thing for different but similar reasons. And the lengths they will go to and the danger they will endure, in fact embrace. Did I say brilliant. Sometimes you're just not ready for a book. But right now I'm ready for this one.

And just finished The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen. I adore Sarah Dessen's work. I love losing myself in her N.C. worlds, particularly the beach books. I love finding hidden - or not so hidden- references to characters from her other books. I love her formula for telling these stories set in summer where the main character discovers that the world is not exactly as she has seen it. I sink in and I am so happy to be there. Emaline's journey in Moon and More is a perfect example, but with some different and I think more realistic results at the end. *slight spoiler coming* Not all endings can be tied up with a bow. I appreciate that because that's how I write, too. We don't all get our HEA just because the story the book is telling is over. So bravo! That said, I was less fond of the moments where Dessen 'breaks the fourth wall.' If you follow Sarah Dessen's blog, if you are a fan, you know that she is super fan of GMA. I love that quirky revelation. I like when she blogs and tells everyone that it must be summer because she's made deviled eggs. She is real and funny and engaging when she blogs. But there are minor -- very minor, as in barely referenced but still there- characters in Moon and More named after the GMA crew. There is a Robin Roberts. A Mr. Champion. I think there's even a Josh Elliott. Which is funny and in-jokey. And sweet. But it pulls me from the story. Because now no way do I believe these characters, minor as they are, are anything more than a device to pay homage to real people. And honestly, I wish they weren't there. Maybe that's just me. I still ADORED the book. For the record, Morris is my favorite character. Daisy, too. I'd love to see a book about Daisy in fact! I think she'd make a fabulous main character.

And thus endeth Friday book talk!

Happy weekend everybody!