State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

It says a lot that I finished this book last week and have already put it out of my mind.  This book was one where the reviews were fabulous, and the book did not thrill me.  This seems to happen a lot - I must have very different tastes than the critics or else they are all on the same wavelength, and I am not.  In any case, for this book, I was not the only one.  I have a friend who posted her great hatred of this book to Facebook, and while I did not hate it, I did not much enjoy it either.  And it never beckoned to me to keep reading.

This is the story of a woman around 40 who gets sent to the jungle to investigate what happened to her colleague and must therefore address unspoken issues in her past.  But much of the story is implausible at best and preposterous at worst.  Decisions and behaviors make no sense for the characters, especially towards the end.  Motivations are entirely unclear or unbelievable.  And overall, unmemorable.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series

It is always a great pleasure to give your child something to read that you loved dearly growing up.  I am currently reading "The Trouble with Jenny's Ear" to my girls, a book I remembered fondly from when I was about their age.  I also started Lauren on Roald Dahl, in particular the non-Charlie books.  My favorite is still "Danny, the Champion of the World," the least fantastical of his books, although Lauren is currently reading Matilda, which seems a really perfect book for her.

But the really entertaining thing has been watching Colin plow through the many books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series over the last month.  You would hear him moving from chuckling to laughing out loud in the evenings and every once in a while he would come in and read aloud a passage that he thought was particularly hilarious.  He delighted in this series, and I am sure he will again, as he has also recently discovered the joys of rereading.

Also:

A Discovery of Witches

I loved this book.  Yes, I am probably sappy.  Yes, the middle of the book is a supernatural romance.  Yes, a lot of people have called it the adult twilight, and I have refused to read twilight.   I don't read books about vampires, although I do read books about witches (see also, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane).  But I couldn't put this book down.  Today as I finished it I read it in line at Starbucks, I read it walking to my office from my car and in the ten minutes between classes.  It has been a long time since a book has grabbed my like this.  Typically I am reading more than one at a time, but for the last three days, this was the only thing I was interested in.  No TV, no video games, just what was happening with my witch and my vampire.  And now I have to wait a year for the sequel!  (Although my guess is that that the sequel, the second in the trilogy, will probably be the weakest of the series.)  If you like witches, or vampires, or urban fantasy, take a look at this.  I thought it was a delight.