Wordless Wednesday...Ocean City, NJ on a Winter Day

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Closed for the season..

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...good night.

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...as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, check these out.

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A Review of "Started Early, Took My Dog" [13]

Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson
Reagan Arthur Books, ISBN 978-0316066730
March 21, 2011, 384 pages

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 I started Early—Took my Dog—
And visited the Sea—
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me—

Emily Dickinson

Our two main characters in this story, Jackson Brodie, back for his fourth appearance, and Tracy Waterhouse have a few things in common. Both are ex-cops, both are more than a little lonely and a bit at a loss as to what to do with themselves and other find themselves in Leeds on the edge of an adventure.

Jackson has taken a job, rather half heartedly, to try and find the birth family of a woman now living in New Zealand. But at the same time he is also keeping an eye open for clues to the location of his 'pretend' ex-wife who stole a great deal of money from him when she ran off.
Tracy's situation is even a little sadder. Never married, no children, few friends, her job was her life and now without it she is just beginning to sense the size of the void. She has taken a job as the head of security for a shopping mall, which gives her something to do...and lead her to the opportunity to make a purchase unlike anything she could ever have considered. In a instant, she makes a decision that will change her life.
For his part, Taylor also make an instantaneous decision and rescues a small dog being beaten by his owner. He happily gives the man a taste of his own medicine, and introduces who was perhaps my favorite character of this book, The Ambassador.  What a dog!

Not that the other characters are not good, because they are. I have not read the previous books in the series, but I don't think it is necessary. The author lets us know everything we need to about Taylor's past to understand what is going on. But I must say I was taken enough with him to want and go back and read the previous ones soon. And Tracy is great! No ones fool, more than willing and able to protect those she cares about and at time very funny. Her and her sidekick, who I will let you meet for yourself, make a delightful pair, on a great if rather dangerous, adventure.

The setup of the story, with a number of intertwining stories, both past and present, took me a little bit to get used to, but then became quite enjoyable. Ms. Atkinson is not beyond using a bit of misdirection and a little sleight of hand, so the reader has to stay or his or her toes as to not go down the wrong path, plot wise You may think you know where the story is going, only to have things turned about as we make another connection. There are a lot of clues, not a few red herrings and before you know it it will all start to tie together and it all adds up to a great read.

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Musing Monday..Manning and Madonna

Wow, another Monday already? Let's see what  MizB at Should Be Reading is asking this week on Musing Monday...

This week’s musing asks…


Did you do any reading in lieu of watching the football game, yesterday, or were you foregoing reading to watch the game? If you read a book (or books) what did you choose?

I would not say I am a football fan.
I have, under pressure and the threat of not being allowed to share in the football food snacks, watched a few games this year. But then my boy Timmy Tebow was out of it and what little interest I had disappeared along with Tim. As did the snacks.

But the Super Bowl...that is different, right.
Even people you have little or no interest in football often watch the game.
Because, first of all, there are the commercials, several of which were pretty good this year.
And many people attend parties, with lots of football snacks.
And there was the Half Time Show, starring Madonna.
Is it just me, or did she look awfully tired. She is getting on in years. Then, she was swallowed up by the giant cloud of smoke. Fitting, since the Giants...WHO PLAY IN New Jersey, NOT New York...won.
Did I mention they play in NJ and, for the life of me, I do not understand why they are not the NJ Giants?

So, it seems I was watching the game, right?
Well, I was, but only because I was at work and I was reading a book on my Nook and I forgot to charge my Nook before I came to work and I did not have the charger with me and I was at work and by the time the game was starting the little battery thingie was showing red and then it died !!!
So, at first, I was reading A Place To Die.
And the battery died. {Darn Evil E-Books!}
So I watched the game.
And now I am going out to search my car and see if maybe I have a book in the back or under the seat. Or something..

Some of you may remember a time when I was prone to ranting about the Evil E-Books. That was before I bought a Nook..then a Color Nook..and got the iPad. Then I gave the ranting up.
However, say what you will about the merits and drawbacks of each format, but one thing for sure...I never had to stop reading a book, a REAL book, because the battery ran out!

Wait! I have my phone. I can read a book on my phone!
Not the one I was reading, because it is a file that I had to convert to a different format and now it appears as a file, not a book, on my Nook and nowhere else. Another problem I never had with a real book.

But I must say, I thought that opening of the half time show was really something. Even if poor Madonna had to be rolled on. Because she is getting on in years, ya know.

Sammy So-So Super Bowl Sunday

Sadly, our Timmy is not playing, but we will watch if snacks will be provided!

Weekend Cooking...Baked Rice Pudding

Recently the Bro and the SIL jetted away to Cancun for a week of relaxation and luxury..because that is how they roll.
For me, it meant some extra quality time with the cutest doggie in the world, So-So Sammy, and the gift of a big bottle of Mexican vanilla.
Oh, what to make, what to make?

Well, the first thing that came to my mind was Rice Pudding. In my memory, vanilla was always at the flavor forefront of my mother's baked rice pudding. But, as with so many of my mother's recipes, I never wrote it down. What was I thinking?
So off to the internet I went.

Most rice pudding recipes start with cooked rice. My mother's did not.
So many contain eggs, to make a custard. My mother's did not.
Many are cooked on the stove-top. My mother's was not.

I know it contained milk..a lot of milk.
It contained rice..not that much.
Sugar and vanilla and...maybe something else.

So I found a couple of recipes. And went from there.

Caite's Baked Rice Pudding

• About 4 cups of milk
• 6 cardamon pods
• 3/4 cup raw rice
• 3/4 cup sugar
• Pinch of salt
• Zest of one orange
• 3/4 cup of raisins
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Put milk in a pot and heat, adding pods of cardamom just before it comes to a boil. Take off the heat and let it steep for about 30 minutes. Remove the pods and mix all the ingredients, except the vanilla, into a large baking dish and put in the preheated oven.


Bake for about two hours, stirring every 20 minutes. After about 1 1/2 hours, add the vanilla and stir in. Bake until rice is very soft and creamy and all the milk is absorbed, adding more milk if it becomes too dry before the rice is soft.

So, was it the same as my mom's?
Yes..and no. The basic recipe was, I think, the same. Creamy, from all the stirring, and yummy. A few simple ingredients.
Same, except for the orange zest and the cardamon, which were not in my mom's recipe but seemed like excellent additions. It smelled so good!
Nothing is as cozy as some tasty rice pudding!

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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A Review of "Feed" [12]

Feed by M.T.Anderson
Listening Library, ISBN 978-0739356203
March 11, 2008

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Oh, what is happening to my reading?
Yesterday it was a review of a memoir.
Today a YA book...and an audio book at that.
But then awhile back I read a glowing review of this book by Sandy at You've GOTTA Read This and Sandy is so often right..if a bit of an audio pusher.
And you know what? I like it.
I liked it a great deal.

In Feed, we are on Earth, sometime in the future. It is a world that is very different in many ways from the one we know, but, perhaps most frightening, most chilling, in many ways not that different at all.

It is a world dominated by the Feed, sort of the ultimate Internet, implanted, hardwired into the brain after the baby, conceived to the specifications of his or her 'parents' in the conceptionarium, is birthed. Speaking aloud is not even needed if you desire. You can just 'message' others through the Feed. Reading for the most part has disappeared. Who needs it when constant information is being piped into out brains, especially tailored to us..and our buying habits. Because it is all about buying a world controlled by the corporations with us as their constant customers.
It is a world that few who live in it question . Even as the physical, natural world around them is almost destroyed, people around the world die of mysterious illnesses, there are unexplained explosions and disasters and everyone is breaking out in weeping lesions, people just go along. No, just go along and make the lesions the must have accessory! Problem solved!

But for Titus, everything is going to be turned on it's head when he and a few of his friends go the resorts on the Moon for Spring Break. There he meets Violet, a girl unlike anyone he has ever met before. Home schooled, the daughter of a professor who teaches the dead languages, she was raised to think for herself, to question things. And sadly, it may be her undoing.
While in a club on the moon, the group are infected by a virus that attacks their Feeds. It is a serious thing, but one the can be fixed..except for Violet. It seems she has an inferior Feed, implanted when she was a child, not at birth like most people, and therefore not as integrated into her system. So slowly, but relentlessly, it is shutting her down, system by system.

While at times this book is funny, and always entertaining, at it's heart it is dark, a dark, thought provoking satire of so much of our culture. Yes, it may be about our possibly future, but more upsetting, it is about our present, about a world of consumerism and conformity, a world where reading and writing and conversations are increasing replaced by texting and tweets and every form of Social Media. Is Titus' world so very different from our own, where we are constantly bombarded with information from our TVs, our phones, our tablets, our laptops, where people spend their days with earplugs blaring noise into their heads?

Violet and Titus are excellent characters, very believable, especially Titus in all his self centered, teenage boy-ness. At times, you will hate him, be so angry at what he does and does not do, but it is always very real and we never stop hoping that somehow, maybe, he will emerge a better person for it. Will he?
And I must say, even if it pains me a bit, that this is a book that seems designed for the audio format. Each chapter, we get to listen into the Feed, we are a part of the ads the tie into what is going on, often in a very creepy way. We hear the messagings between characters, with a slight echo that is perfect, alerting us to the change. And the constant slang, that might be difficult to understand if you were reading it, seems so natural as you listen to the characters. Even the constant use of the "F" word...and it is used in this book as much as in any book I have ever read, might be grating when read, but is not surprising in the mouths of these teenagers, trying to act all grown up but living in a nightmare. Narrated by David Aaron Baker, he gets that whiny, teen voice of Titus just perfect.
Yes, even if you are not a fan of audio books, and I have my issues with the format usually, this is one I would totally recommend.

This book is recommended for kids 14 and up, but honestly I can see many would have a problem with that. Between the language..and some mild sexual references..I would aim a bit older. But without question, this book raises a number of issues that I would think could lead to some great discussions with teenagers.
Not that you adults will not be challenged to think about a few things too.

An entertaining, funny, oh so sad, thought provoking book that I highly recommend.

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A Review of "Paris, My Sweet" [11]

Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) by Amy Thomas
Sourcebooks, ISBN 978-1402264115
February 1, 2012, 304 pages

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"Part love letter to Paris, part love letter to New York, and total devotion to all things sweet, PARIS, MY SWEET is a treasure map for anyone with a hunger for life."

"In the eight years I had lived in New York, it always thrilled me to return to the city. Whether I was training back from a weekend at my dad's in Connecticut or landing at JFK after three weeks of hiking and biking in New Zealand, I could never suppress my grin when I saw the jagged skyline, the halo of light emanating from the city, the sea of yellow taxis, or the mishmash of cultures and clothing swimming together in one crazy orgy. New York was under my skin. For years, it had been my true love. And then Paris came along."

After a semester in France years ago and a summer in Paris in 2008, Amy was, without question, just a little obsessed with all things French. Yet, she loves a great deal about her life working and living in New York City. Her job as a advertising copywriter, her friends, her cat, her cute East Village apartment..not to mention an intimate knowledge of every bakery and chocolatier in the city...makes for a good life. But when the chance arises to take a temporary assignment in the City of Light, and delicious desserts, writing ad copy for Louis Vuitton, of course she can not say no.
The question becomes will she even want to come back "home". Or actually, maybe what makes a place home.

If you read here regularly, you may know that I am not the biggest fan of memoirs.
So what was I doing reading this? Well, I must say I was won over by the promise of descriptions of all sorts of sweet and delicious treats, on both sides of the ocean, and this book did not disappoint in keeping that promise. I do not share Ms. Thomas love of Paris (OK, maybe because I have never been there) but the descriptions of food in this book are so well done, so wonderful, that it could have me packing my bag and buying a black beret for the trip.
Ms. Thomas loves food and she excels at writing about it. The descriptions will have your mouth watering and, without a doubt, those parts are my favorite part of the book. Happily, there are a lot of them.

But the author also write some very interesting observation about the city and her life there and about it's inhabitants. Again, she is very good at putting us right there as she peddles around on her Vélib', a bicycle for Paris bike sharing system. We are there as she finds the best macarons in the world or shows the city off to her visiting mother and step-father and while she deals with the difficulties of making friends, let alone finding true love, in a culture with some significant differences from the Big Apple.

If you live in New York or Paris, or plan to visit either, and have a sweet tooth, this is a book that you will want to pick up. It is fun..and delicious. The lists of 'must visit' places and the cute little maps will be priceless, whether you search out just one or every single one on the list. But even if you never step a foot in either, this is still a fun read, one best read on a full stomach, and yet one with a bit of a serious note.
What will it be for her, NY or Paris?
Will she find true love.
Well, you will have to pick up a copy and check it out to find out!

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My thanks to Sourcebooks for providing me with a copy to review.

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Wordless Wednesday...A Few More Lighthouses

All Maine this week...

One of the "Two Lights" at Cape Elizabeth

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Rockland Breakwater Light

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Lobster boats in Bass Harbor

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Marshall Point

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Bass Harbor Light

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...as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, check these out.

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Musing Monday..Plan? I Don't Need No Stinking Plan!

Nice and early Monday morning, so let's see what MizB at Should Be Reading is asking this week...

This week’s musing asks…

How far along are you in your current read before you start thinking about what you’ll read next?

Wait, let me get this right. You think I should be picking my next book to read while I am reading the current book? Really?

I may have mentioned it before, but when it comes to my reading, and actually when it come to this blog, I really have no..or very little..plan. It's how I roll. :-)
I remember first reading about fellow bloggers who keep a calendar of what has to be read and/or reviewed by a certain date. Log and charts and graphs, oh my! And I must say I was impressed. But I have no plan of following their plan...if that is not too many plans for you.

First, I am not the most organized of people. Not like one of those people who hoard stuff unplanned, but not up to keep some giant calender with my reading obligations. Which is maybe why I miss a few, or a lot, from time to time. If I am part of a tour, OK, I pay attention to that. But reviewing on or close to the publication date of a review book, as I attempt, not so good. But I am doing the best that I can, without trying too hard. If that makes sense.

Reading, even reading review books, is not my job. It is suppose to be fun. And keeping charts and graphs and such is too much like work to be fun. When it is not fun for me, I will just stop doing it.

So when do I pick my next read?
When I finish the current one.
I think "Hmmm..what will I read next?" I do consider what review books I have that will be coming up soon. And I consider if I have a library book that is due back soon sitting around.
But most of all I just consider what I feel like reading. Do I have one from a favorite author waiting, or one I read a great review of somewhere?
Do I want something more serious, or something a bit fast and lighter? A thriller, a cozy, non-fiction or, oh heavens, a memoir? It will all effect what I pick.
Right after I turn the last page of this one.

Weekend Cooking...Pork Rolls Stuffed With Ricotta and Spinach

What to cook, what to cook??

Well, I am a believer that you should cook to use up what is on hand whenever possible, so when I saw this recipe in the Philadelphia Inquirer the other day, I was hooked. I had that left over container of ricotta in the frig (wow, that has a long expiration date!) and that boneless pork loin I bought on sale at the supermarket.
Perfect!

OK, yes, I made some changes in my version.
The original recipe use 1/8 lb. slices and I used 1/4 lb. pieces, slicing a one pound piece in four. Pork dries out easily and that original thickness sounded too thin. They put the pancetta on the outside, I rolled it into the filling and I added the Parmesan cheese. They used toothpicks to close, which never works for me or the thicker pieces, so I tied them. I dusted the rolls with flour, to get that extra browning, added garlic to the sauce and I add the parsley and capers to the sauce at the end and reduced it to concentrate the flavors.
OK, I made quite a few changes, but the idea is the same.

Pork Rolls Stuffed With Ricotta and Spinach
(adapted from Cucina Provera)

Makes 4 servings

• 8 ounces spinach, steamed, drained and finely chopped
• 1/2 cup whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 pound boneless pork loin, sliced into 4 pieces
• 4 thin slices pancetta
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2-3 cloves finely chopped garlic
• 1 Tbs. chopped parsley
• 1 tsp. capers

1. In a medium bowl, combine the spinach, parmesan and ricotta and stir to blend. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Set aside.

2. Place a slice of pork between 2 pieces of parchment paper, and roll with a rolling pin until flattened to an even thickness, about 1/4 inch. Repeat to flatten the remaining slices. Put on a slice of pancetta and spread a thin layer of the spinach mixture on top, leaving a 1/4-inch border. Roll up and tie at each end with cooking string to secure. Repeat with remaining pork. Roll each piece in flour until just dusted.

3. In a large, heavy saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat, and sear the rolls for about 2 minutes on each side. Remove the pork, add chopped garlic and brown slightly. Now add the wine and stir to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. 
Put the rolls back in the pan and simmer briskly for 7 to 8 minutes, turning the rolls once or twice to cook them through. Remove pork to a plate and cut and remove the string. Add parsley, and capers, if desired, and bring to a boil, reducing sauce to desire thickness. 
Taste and adjust salt and pepper if needed.
Serve at once.

 

Very nice, I must say, and pretty quick to cook.
I loved the pork, by I think it would be just as good with veal or chicken or even beef. And you could use stock instead of wine, although the wine adds a lot of flavor to the sauce. And the dish is nice served with a glass of it as well.

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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A Review of "A Superior Death" [10]

A Superior Death by Nevada Barr

Putnam Adult, ISBN 978-0399139161

(March 23, 1994, 303 pages

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Anna Pigeon is not really a cold weather person, preferring the dry, hot desert, but I guess National Park service rangers do not always have totally control over where they are assigned. Which is maybe why she finds herself on the decided cold Lake Superior, a ranger in Michigan's Isle Royale National Park, in this, the second in Barr's series. But then that watery, chilly setting is exactly why I picked this one out of the 17 Anna Pigeon books to read. You know what they say...every adventure is better with a boat...and there will be any number of boats this time around, as well as some cold and dangerous scuba diving and a sunken ghost ship, deep at the bottom of Superior.

As one of the ranger assigned to Michigan's Isle Royale park, out on Lake Superior, one of Anna's duties is to give permits to recreational divers who want to check out the sunken wrecks that dot the area,. This includes the one that entails the most dangerous dive, the Kamloops, which still contains the bodies of five crew members, preserved since their deaths in 1927 by the icy old water of the Great Lake. But when the divers show her some pictures they took down there and the pictures show six bodies, it soon looks like murder is the only way to explain that new inhabitant of the ship.

The sixth man turns out to be expert local diver Denny Castle, murdered shortly after his recent wedding and found in the ship, dressed, bizarrely, in the uniform of a 19th century ship's captain.

Who could have wanted him dead? Maybe the twin brother and sister who were his partners on a dive boat and look to now inherit the business. Or maybe his new wife, who never reported him missing and takes the news of her husband's death rather oddly. Or how about Anna's fellow ranger Scotty Butcus, whose own wife has appeared to have gone missing as well. And what of the rumors that she and the dead man, Denny, were involved. 
Oh, there are any number of odd and quirky characters on the island who might be guilty of something, including one very strange murder.

I have read a number of books in the Anna Pigeon series and picking up one is always like returning to spend some time with an old friend. It's comfortable and you know that you are going to have a good time. While I usually suggest reading a series in order, I have not done that with this series over the years, actually picking a book by what sounds like a interesting setting and this was perhaps my favorite setting of them all. Yes, I like the boats and the chilly summer weather, but perhaps what was best were the parts about the deep and dangerous dives. Very interesting and not a little scary.

And, of course, Anna is a great character, funny and smart and far from perfect, sustained by regular chats with her NYC therapist sister, Molly and a glass or two ...or three or four of wine, something which at this point in the series appears to be a bit of an issue for Anna. But we will forgive her....she is only human. And we like her.

Anna's take on the tourists visiting the parks, her fellow rangers and the running of the parks themselves is always fun and one suspects spot on, since the author was herself a park ranger. I love visiting a different National Park in each book...OK, I think some parks may make more than one appearance ...and seeing them through Anna and Nevada Barr's eyes. Maybe someday I will get a chance to visit them in person, but in the meantime, visiting them with Anna and her friends, with a healthy dose of death and danger, is always a fun time and an entertaining read.

Ms. Barr, if by chance you might read this (ok, it may be unlikely, but I can try) I have only one suggestion for you, maybe for your next book. 

In fact, just three words...Acadia National Park!

A Review of "Believing the Lie" [9]

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

Dutton Adult, ISBN 97805255952589

January 10, 2012, 624 pages

Back for the seventeenth time..yes, 17...is Inspector Thomas Lynley's and his regular cast of characters, including Simon and Deborah St. James and the ever loyal assistant, Barbara Havers. This time he is on a secret mission, to investigate the apparently accidental death of one Ian Cresswell, nephew and heir apparent of the very wealthy and very influential Bernard Fairclough. For reason that are not entire clear or convincing, Mr. Fairclough wants the death looked into, unofficially, and has the influence to convince the head of Scotland Yard to assign one of his best to look into it.

And let's just say that once they start digging into that family, they better be wearing their hip boots, because things are going to get quite nasty. Certainly, there appears to be any number of reasons why Ian might have been killed and any numbers of people who might benefit from his death and the further Lynley and the rest dig, the more possibilities arise. But still, was it murder? Sadly, by the end of the book, I barely cared.

George's books tend to be rather complex stories, and that is not a bad thing. But this book goes far, far further down that path, to the point that I think it got lost in the weeds.

I have said it before, but a huge tome makes me rather suspicious, and with this one weighing in at 600 pages, there is cause. Sometimes it is a matter of too much material, that you could almost make two books of it. But in this case it is a matter of too much matter, pages after page that just ramble on and should have been cut. In fact, there are a storyline or two, of many, that might have been cut, like the one of the giant reporter and his mother's matchmaking. The giant aside, bigger is not always better. Too many storylines, too many characters, several of them boring , several of them distasteful, all in need of a serious editor.

I have never been a big fan of Deborah and she does not prove me wrong in this book, doing something which one might argue results in someone death. But even my favorites do not come across too well in this one. Yes, Thomas is a grieving widower and has to get on with his life but his affair with his boss is distasteful and out of character. And poor Barbara is relegated to spending most of the book worrying about her haircut and her wardrobe. Oh, how far we have fallen.

But maybe the biggest problem is with the implausibility of the central story. There is an attempt to have it explained at the end, but it falls short in my opinion.

Why all this need for the investigation to be secret? Why the need for it to be secret even from Lynley's boss, with the problems it causes? And why in the world would Deborah and St. James go off for an endless amount of time..ok, maybe it just seemed like an endless amount of time ...to bumble about, really seeming to figure little out. And the final dash of pedophilia, well, I guess we need that to seem timely these days. I must admit that toward the end I started to skip ahead. I was curious as to the solution but was tiring of slogging along to get there.

As I said, I have enjoyed several of George's books before, but this one fell far short of what I remember that made them enjoyable. I think fans who feel compelled to read her latest will be disappointed and would not recommend that readers who have heard good things about this series start with this one.

In fact, start with the first and stop before you get here.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book.

Wordless Wednesday...Lighthouses

...near and far, from NJ and New York, to Maine and Turkey.

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Cape May, NJ

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Fire Island, NY

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Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, Maine

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Squirrel Point Light, Maine

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Owl Head Light, Maine

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Maiden's Tower, Istanbul Harbor

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...as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, check these out.

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Musing Monday... 'Just the facts, ma'am...just the facts'

Another Monday morning, so let's head over and see what MizB at Should Be Reading is asking this week...

This week’s musing asks…

Why do you think that the Young Adult genre is so popular with even the adult readers? Do you read YA books, yourself?

I think the answer is simple. Some of them, maybe the ones that really succeed with youths and adults, are just really good stories. And bottom line, that is what we all want in a book isn't it, a really good story.

Maybe it is at least in part because usually YA books are too complex, not huge, heavy reads. Some adult fiction seems to get so serious, so full of itself, that it seems the author almost has forgotten this is suppose to be entertainment as well. Sure, maybe a book like that is what we want, but I think for most of us, for most of the time, we are looking for some to escape with, to relax with. And often a YA book can fill that need.
Even when they deal with more serious topics, maybe the young age of the characters makes the situation seem more hopeful. They are young, things can change, it will be alright..maybe.

Then there is the element of seeing a story unfold through young eyes, eyes that have not seen all this before, jaded eyes. I think that has the possibility of taking us back and letting us see those experiences in a fresh way once again, whatever the experiences may be, from first love to the alien invasion.

Do I read YA?
A bit. I tend to read the big hits, the ones everyone in BlogLand is talking about, like The Hunger Games when it first came out. A good, exciting story.
But I don't read then as much as some book bloggers.
Maybe because it is just hard to find a nice serial killer in most YA books for some reason. And you know I have a weakness for a nice serial killer.

Sick Sammy So-So Sunday

Poor Sammy has a sore foot, and since he will not leave it alone, The Cone had to be applied.

"I look like a fool...I know you are laughing at me, I just know it!"