A new baby poses certain challenges to one’s writing time…and pretty much everything else I thought I knew about my life.
However, somehow, blissfully, I have managed to read a few books in the last month. If I can’t be writing, I always look at reading as an extension of writing. It’s like the research portion.
I read Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork and Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Both are YA. I loved Marcelo; thought it was totally original YA with great characters though I didn’t totally dig the ending. The book went from realistic fiction to a bit of a mystery and I personally didn’t need to mystery part of it.
Anderson is one of my favorite YA writers for realistic fiction although her historical fiction book Fever has always been my least favorite of her books. Chains, which is a historical novel of slavery, unfortunately also fell into this category for me. The voice just isn’t as strong as in her realistic fiction and the plot plods along; and then this happened, and then this happened, and then something else happened. I also found the book to be very dark, but I suppose this could reflect the events of the time as much as anything else.
So reading is the new writing at least for now. Uh oh, I think I hear the baby…
Ideas In Things 