update

Since apparently it's not just C and myself who read this, I feel the need to add that C just texted, in reply to my "wtf with these essays?!" kind of message "Haha.  I'm staring at barbarella's [name changed to protect the guilty of heinously abusing a word processor], trying to figure out anything to say.  Why does she only profile chefs she clearly wants to bang?"  This, ladies and gentlemen (well, ladies, as far as I know) is entirely true, which makes the awfulness even worse.  If someone wrote so poorly about me I would take my chances with a human-monkey hybrid before choosing to repopulate the planet with that person.  Although that whole last-man-on-earth scenario has always seemed totally stupid to me, because if my only choice was to fate my children to a life of incest, and my descendants to a life of problematic, and likely ugly, inherited phyical and mental issues, I really don't think that would get me in the mood.  But the boredom, maybe.  Eh.  In any case, to keep up the pretence this blog is a "book-log" and not just me b*tching to the cosmos, I started Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett yesterday, after I finished The Reincarnationist.  Bennett also wrote something called Figures in Silk which was a fun, if somewhat fluffy, historical fiction/romance, but with an interesting look at the development of the silk trade in England, tied to all that craziness with the Shore girl & the War of the Roses.  I feel like I learned a lot, but I would need to check to make sure the information was correct - but the author lists sources for more reading, etc., on her (rather interesting) website (which you can read here; also interesting, but topic for another time - why are UK covers generally so much cooler?  also, just realized she's written some other stuff - should look into it if still feeling positive after Portrait) so I think it is.  I also think this new one should be good - but, somewhat, loosely, to my point, the main character is one of Sir Thomas More's adopted daughters, and I think More could totally be like this guy in the essay.  I mean, super promising, and then kinda huge let-down, inspiring all sorts of violent thoughts.  Can't quite get a grip on More, though, seriously; read a great biography of his daughter & his relationship, and have TRIED to read one about him, but Wolf Hall and The Tudors are just so much more.  Oh...I should really just think of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers whenever I am mad.  I just went from 0 to blissful in about a second.  I know The Tudors is not a book, but it gets a link & image anyways :)  Okay, calm now.  Will take another shot at my homework.

Rain, rain, go away...

I have homework to do, so...guess that makes it blogging time!  Just lugged groceries home in the rain and do not feel like writing essay critiques.  The reading shouldn't be the issue, but the writing is always a pain.  Well, baby steps, I guess.  Reincarnationist was pretty bad.  I kept reading it, because it was either that or fight-starting texts to the guy I tried to break up with over the weekend (which is great, since we weren't even dating), but it was predictable and boring, no matter how many explosions, sex scenes, assasins, and buried treasures were crammed in.  I think it's the first in the series, but I can't see myself reading more unless I am REALLY bored and the book is for sale RIGHT in front of me for REALLY cheap.  And, you know, I am in the mood for something totally pointless.  Wench, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, on the other hand, was really good.  Roughly, its the story of four slave women, and some slave men, who are brought over the course of a couple summers by their masters to a resort in the North, just before the Civil War.  One of them women ends up being the main character (although not the woman I initially though the book would center on), but all the women, and most of the characters, were well drawn.  Of course, mark of a good book - the more fully-drawn each of the characters were, the more I wanted to know about them!  I would be thrilled if the author were to even tell almost the same story four times, from the point of view of the different women, and I would devour each book as soon as I could.  The men, particularly the white men don't fare as well (the slaveowners are especially one-dimensional), but a minor issue.