I have been on a roll reading books lately. Andrew has been so swamped with schoolwork and Cambria goes to sleep so early that I need something to do in the evenings. I have tried TV on and off but can't seem to get into any shows that I want to watch by myself. I prefer to watch TV with Andrew.
I've read some really awesome books lately:
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| If you haven't read this book, stop everything and READ IT IMMEDIATELY! |
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| I cried, I laughed, I cringed, I loved it! |
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| Oh, Cambria, you are in for it with your mother's addiction to self-help books. |
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| Ugh. |
I didn't like it.
I liked the way it was written although I found myself getting confused by the sentence structure and having to reread passages often.
And I really liked this description that begins chapter 2; "Joe Pipkin was the greatest boy who ever lived. The grandest boy who ever fell out of a tree and laughed at the joke. The finest boy who ever raced around the track, winning, and then, seeing his friends a mile back somewhere, stumbled and fell, waited for them to catch up, and joined, breast and breast, breaking the winner's tape. The jolliest boy who ever hunted out all the haunted houses in town, which are hard to find, and came back to report on them and take all the kids to ramble through the basements and scramble up the ivy outside-bricks and shout down the chimneys and make water off the roofs, hooting and chimpanzee-dancing and ape-bellowing. The day Joe Pipkin was born all the Orange Crush and Nehi soda bottles in the world fizzed over..."
But, generally, I didn't care for the plot. It just didn't engage me.
Next on my list was this suggestion from the KSL article:
I LOVED IT! It was so creepy fantastic!
{Disclaimer: I have never seen the movie with Daniel Radcliffe but I hear it is absolutely terrifying and it sounds like they take extreme liberties with the plot to sensationalize this story for the screen. The two plot resolutions [antagonist, protagonist] have been changed in the movie as well.}
Many reviews online call this "the ghost story Jane Austen never wrote." I don't know if I agree with that description but I believe the intent was to say that this book is an old-fashioned haunt. To describe the style using popular literary references, I would say that it has the Gothic mystery of Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and the supernatural of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."
It was a quick read and only took me a few hours to finish. I started it before Andrew left for a study group one evening. He wisely advised me to wait on reading the book since I would probably get spooked being home alone. I'm glad he said something because I hadn't thought of that!
While he was away, I tried to watch TV. I cleaned the kitchen. Thoroughly. I folded some laundry. Checked my email. Read the news. Updated the "most recent" tab on Facebook and scrolled through about a day's worth of statuses. And here and there, I squeezed in a chapter of this book. Because I couldn't resist.
I started to get extra creeped out.
So I took a spooky selfie. To kill more time.
But I had to keep reading! I was glued to the couch and the pages were nearly turning themselves as I flew through the story. I was paralyzed with fear but I COULDN'T STOP READING.
Finally Andrew came home. Sigh of relief! That meant I could finally get up and go to the bathroom without fear of something jumping out at me. Andrew walked into our bedroom and so I decided to use the second bathroom next to Cambria's bedroom. I turned the corner in the hallway and FREAKED OUT BECAUSE CAMBRIA'S NURSERY DOOR IS WIDE OPEN!!!!! I had gone to the bathroom earlier and her door was latched (as it always is). Needless to say, my sudden scream woke Cambria up. If you have read the book or have seen the movie, then you will know why an OPEN NURSERY DOOR (hint: that's the sign of the ghost in this book) very nearly gave me a heart attack.
Regardless of my real life scare with this book, I loved it. I realized how much I loved it the next day when the sun was shining and I wasn't feeling like a chicken. And I could savor the narrator's last words again:
"They asked for my story. I have told it. Enough."
Chills.
Next on my list from KSL was "The Haunting of Hill House."
I read nearly half of it and was just gearing up for the hauntings to begin when I decided that these books were turning me into a big ol' scaredy cat when it came to getting up with Cambria in the night. She's been teething and so she has been waking up more frequently. Because of these spooky stories, I dash in her nursery, shove her paci in her mouth, tuck her blankets around her in a lazy swaddle and run back to my bed before the Boogie Man can grab me.
So that book got returned to the library and I will have to wait until next year (when I don't have a baby getting up in the night) to read the other books on my list.
And if you have read this blog post and have any recommendations on thrilling Halloween stories, I would really love to hear them!
