What I'm Reading Right Now

I've spent far too much time on figment lately, but I've also had the wonderful, amazing, lovely, delicious time to read at ALL. Books! I bid Borders a sad goodbye in 2011, but there's a Barnes and Noble within fifteen minutes of my house, and the employees must be getting tired of seeing me. I'm the kind of girl who sits in the back all day with a stack of books and doesn't move till closing time. It just [insert creepy side note] smells so good in there.

1. Happy Cafe -Figment novel by Enaam Alnagger
Figment has introduced me to the wonderful world of magical realism. It's rare that an entire genre hooks me in, but I'm dying to try it for myself. In the meantime, I have scads of beautiful stories both of the paper and of the electronic form. Happy Cafe is the story of Elodie, a lonely girl who discovers a magical cafe, carried to her town with the beginning of the winter. I got hooked by the story right away. It's a really beautiful piece of work and full of characters I'm dying to learn more about. I love, love, love the name Elodie, by the way.

2. Midnight in Austenland, by Shannon Hale
This is the third time I've read the book since it came out in January. It's the sequel to Austenland, which is coming out as a movie this year, directed by Jerusha Hess! And since both books are just a big chunk of wonderful, I'm going to go ahead and tell you what they're about. Austenland is the story of Jane Hayes, a single, thirty-three-year-old New Yorker. Is there a reason she's single? Oh yes. Jane is obsessed by the idea of Mr. Darcy, particularly Mr. Darcy as played by Colin Firth in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. When her great-aunt discovers her secret, Jane finds herself the recipient of a prepaid, three-week vacation to a secret resort called Pembrook Park. In Pembrook Park, it's still 1816, and life is easy--full of empire dresses and Regency manners, strolling in the park and maybe, just maybe, a proposal from a certain gentlemen. Once firmly in Austenland, however, it is up to Jane to discover what is real and what is only fantasy....

Midnight in Austenland could stand on its own, but the two books together form such a scrumptious series. It takes up a new main character, Charlotte Constance Kinder. Charlotte, a successful businesswoman, loving wife, and mother of two, will never understand what drove her husband away. Cast off in favor of a mistress, Charlotte takes comfort in Austen books and soon, discovers Pembrook Park. However, this time, things take a dark turn, and Charlotte begins to suspect that a murder has taken place inside Pembrook's walls. Add that to the mystery of the brooding Mr. Mallery and Miss Gardenside's unusual illness, and Charlotte becomes a detective extraordinaire, determined to solve Pembrook's secrets...

Shannon Hale is so unbelievably original and witty. Her books have me literally laughing out loud. While Austenland obviously draws inspiration from Pride and Prejudice, Midnight in Austenland takes a Northanger Abbey turn, with murder, mystery-solving, and a fair amount of gothic romance. Both of the books are fantastic.

3. James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
Yep, you heard me. I went through a hefty Dahl phase as a child. My favorites were Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. I suppose Dahl wrote magical realism as well, though I've never categorized him into a genre before. I have to confess I'm still drawn to the children's section in bookstores. Everything is colorful, the books are creative and funny. I still pull books off the "5th-8th grade" shelf. Recently, I wandered over and found James again. Then I sat down in the cafe and read it from cover to cover. One of my favorite things about Roald Dahl aside from his fantastic imagination is his wordplay. The Big Friendly Giant still gets me laughing ("You are once again gobblefunking! Don't do it. This is a serious and snitching subject.") and it was just the same with the naughty singing Centipede on the peach trip across the Atlantic. I think I even had a Dahl cookbook when I was little that taught you how to make "hot noodles made from poodles on a slice of garden hose....."

4. Birdcage Girl -Figment novel by Kimberly Karalius

I've read pretty much everything else Kimberly has posted on figment, including her awesome novel-in-progress Boys and Bees, so it surprised me I hadn't dived into Birdcage Girl yet. Once I did, I hung over my computer for five days, reading the deliciously short chapters. Another foray into magical realism that left me with nothing but awesomeness. Birdcage Girl centers around Ashlyn, a girl kept locked in a birdcage by her overprotective mother. One of my favorites aspects of the novel (well, okay, I had a LOT of favorite aspects) was the characterization. A girl locked in a birdcage, a doctor who knows secrets of her past, a butler with metal bones, and a female cat named Jimmy.
Any time there's a cat, I'm hooked. ;)

5. The Jane Austen Handbook: Proper Life Skills from Regency England, by Margaret C. Sullivan
A birthday present from my mother, and I'm loving it. It's perfect that it came while we're in the middle of reading Midnight in Austenland (I read aloud to my mother--yes, with a bad British accent). It's amazing that Jane Austen still garners so much fascination from readers, two hundred years after the publication of her books. The book recalls some good moments from Austen's books (disastrous proposals, gossip, and a nice chunk of Miss Jane's humor), and gives information on everything from hairdressing, to what to do during a summer visit to Bath, to how to politely reject a proposal of marriage ("If all else fails, swoon.")

It's never fun during the schoolyear when I rack my brains and realize I can't remember the last time I read a book. Vacation time is good time in my book (hahahah, okay, sorry, there's a stray pun), where I can sleep in and spend the day reading (also writing, tracking down that lost camera charger, cleaning the kitchen, applying for a job, recycling the scads of scrap paper in my room, ripping the stray threads out of my new sweater.....). You get the idea. As I'm geting older and just a tad busier, I'm realizing more and more what a gift a good book is. The bookstore will never get rid of me.