Roadtrip Reading

My parents and I drove up to the Bay area to see my brother for his birthday this last weekend, and I was able to get some reading in since my parents don't trust my driving and would rather do it themselves. I read:

-Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke: I had actually started this back in like October but stopped reading it because of reasons (length and laziness, mainly. It's the size of a latter Potter). JS&MN is an alternate history of England where magic is possible. It's a story of a prophecy and two magicians and their friends/acquaintances and disagreements and such, all told in the style of Jane Austen (genteel and excellently shade-throwing). It has tons of magical history and stories and footnotes (one of my favorite things in books) and I adored it. 4.99999/5 stars, only because one villain didn't get a harsh enough comeuppance and also one major enchantment should have dissolved when its caster died but whatever. They're going to do a miniseries of it and I can't wait.

-Diary of a Wimpy Kid: After JS&MN I wanted something completely different in tone, plus I had downloaded this from the iBookstore because it was free. It was funny and I can see why it's a kids bestseller. I'd read a later one that was my younger cousin's and found it hilarious, and if this series had come out when my younger brother was a kid he would have eaten them up. 3.5/5 stars, because of character meanness.

-Leave No Stone Unturned (Lexie Starr Series #1) by Jeanne Glidewell: This was the weakest of the bunch. It was a Nook blog Free Fridays pick and the protagonist works in a library, so I downloaded it to my Nook app. Firstly, I was under the impression she was a librarian, and she's not. A part-time library volunteer is not the same thing as a librarian (not knocking them. Library volunteers rock and anyway I used to be one myself). Apart from a key piece of information being discovered while Lexie Starr was helping a patron do research on microfilm of newspapers (do library volunteers even do that?), the library thing was pretty much nonexistent. Deliver on your hook! I was disappointed. Secondly, the writing was just... not good. Tons of telling and little showing, so much clunkiness, Mary Sue-ness, too-perfect and/or too-quirky characters that never really felt like real people, unnecessary details in a misguided attempt to flesh out characters and scenes, et cetera and so on. I would have forgiven the lack of librariana if the writing hadn't been so No. If I'm getting distracted from your story by your ham-fisted writing, you're not doing it right. And the stupid and weird romance thing! I can't even get into it because I could write a whole ranty blog post about it (I'll spare you), but it was just weird and unbelievable and it happened way too fast. The love interest was just too perfect to be true. Also, there was something just really off to me about having one of the main baddies/suspects be a gay tattooed, pierced, drug addicted male stripper with daddy issues. And as half Native American, he was the only person of color in the book! Very negative. Oh yeah, and Lexie immediately starts impersonating officers and exterminators and stuff to get info, and her love interest immediately and without reservations starts doing it with her too! The whole time I'm reading this I'm thinking "this woman is a published author. WHY." And then I felt simultaneously motivated (if she gets published with that kind of writing then I def should be able to) and disillusioned (she sucks and got published and I probably suck less but can't find the nerve to write :/). The mystery was semi-passable, I guess. 1/5 stars.

TIFITLWIW: Things found in books, castle edition

An admission ticket to see Sissinghurst Castle, inside a souvenir booklet for said castle. Easy to see how this one came about.

It's been a while since I took these but I think they're the same thing and were found in the same book? I found this Shakespeare Memorial Window fascinating. The other one is of the Shakespeare monument, which shows the Bard in sassy repose.