So, I read kind of a lot of books while working my way through the easy part of this revision. Also because the first part of this week was crowded with fairly stressful time-sensitive stuff that made me drive to St Louis three days in a row. Ugh, how in the world people can stand to commute like that every day, I will never know.
I’m just about to dive into the hard part of the revision, so I should have THE WHITE ROAD ready to go by, oh, Monday, I hope. Then I’ll send it to Caitlin and then I would take the rest of the month off because I don’t have comments back yet about MOUNTAIN (soon, I hear, and hopefully revision for that will be minor) or THE WINTER DRAGON (probably more revision for that one) or for DOOR INTO LIGHT (which I fear will need pretty extensive revision, alas, but I’m sure it’ll be a much better book afterward.)
Except what I DO have sitting here waiting to be revised is an Ezekiel short story for next year, so I need to do that; plus eventually I need to actually write the third Black Dog book . . . there’s no END. At least not for a while.
But! As I said, lots of reading of great books over the past week or so.
1. Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman. Totally charming. What an irrepressible child Birdy is. Her ingenuity in getting rid of prospective suitors is especially fun, though she’s irrepressible in every other context, too. For a story to bring the “flavor” of the times to life, well, you could hardly do better. Of course it’s quite obvious how the story is going to work out, and it does take authorial intervention. Though for all I know, Birdy really would have poisoned that lout if necessary. I mean, I probably would have.
Man, I am SO GLAD I did not live in Britain during the medieval period.
2. A Wish Upon Jasmine by Laura Florand. And from the medieval period straight to contemporary France, with jasmine flowers everywhere, not to mention Rosiers everywhere. Damien was a great protagonist, and I love Jess. I’m fascinated by the glimpse we got of Antoine, too. It’s pretty clear where that’s going, but finding out exactly how it’ll work out, you know, that’ll be fun part.
3. Sunshine by Robin McKinley. I needed a soothing re-read in there, and though this isn’t the most soothing McKinley title, turns out it was the one that I was in the mood for. Such an amazing beginning on this book. One of the best novel-beginnings ever. I just love how it starts off so perfectly normal and then we get one or two words being used in ways that seem odd (“spartan” as “cool” is the first) and then, of course, we take that sharp turn into paranormal.
4. Midnight Crossroad by Charlene Harris. This is a departure from the Sookie series because that maintained a pretty tight focus on Sookie, whereas the Midnight series has four important pov protagonists. Maybe more as the series goes on, too. The focus really is more on the town of Midnight than on any particular character. In fact, if you had to pick one character as truly The Central Protagonist, it’d probably be Lemuel, who is not a pov character at all.
I actually liked it quite a bit, but enough to pay more than $10 for the sequel? When I have over 200 books on my TBR pile already? Not sure, not sure.
Aaaaand …
5. Hunting by Andrea K Höst. Cause it occurred to me, when I was tired and bored last night, not in the mood to re-read anything and SO not in the mood to revise anything, that I still had a couple AKH books I hadn’t read, this being one of them.
Loved it! It was just what I needed. I will have to write a real review. Maybe tonight, as a break from (sigh) revision.
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