Monday, April 16, 2007

A reading marathon...

How can it be, that with a great pile of started books waiting to be finished, I picked up something different to read? Wanting to preview a YA novel for my kids, I took out a stack of Margaret Peterson Haddix books from the library. She writes copiously. One series is Shadow Children. A classic "what if" scenario. What if the overpopulation zealots managed to bring in a law that only allowed two children per family? And then, what if some families happened to/decided to have a third? How would that child manage to remain undetected? What if these children got the notion that they should have rights? I love that "what if" concept in SciFi fiction. These books managed to keep me glued to the page (between all the "stuff" I have to do, like housework and meals and kids needing rides and doing school). I read the first 5 books one after the other, but have to wait to get the last two which I have reserved. Then I went on to her "Running out of time" novel - similar theme as the movie The Village. I finished off my Haddix marathon with "Turnabout", which has an immortality theme. I found all these books to be perfect for what I was needing this week - diversion. The concepts and characters were interesting and the writing not too juvenile that I felt at any time that I was being dumbed down.
But then, just to top off the week, on Sunday I listened to an award winning book (on tape) - Rockbound by Frank Parker Day. This book won the 2005 Canada Reads contest. Now this was a great book! The book takes place on the south shore of Novia Scotia and has all the classic elements of good literature. Drama, suspense, romance, jealousy, hatred, murder. Very Shakespearean in flavour. But it also reminded me of Moby Dick, which I also listened to as a book on tape. Maybe that's because of the sea/fishing atmosphere. The narrator does a remarkable job of getting the accents of the characters down so well - that really adds authenticity to the story which I wouldn't have necessarily gotten if I had read it. I highly recommend this book.

"Fishing boats at Sea" by Vincent Van Gogh

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