Well, I'm remiss in posting again I see. Mainly due to a VERY busy May, and now June is all about getting ready for when the baby arrives...

So just a quick run-down of the last three books I've read:

Number 13 is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susannah Clarke. Long gone are the days where I can polish off a 1000 page book in a matter of days. Now it takes me a couple of weeks at least. Anyway, this was a book I'd always been meaning to read, but never got around to. The size didn't deter me, but I'd heard a few times that it was really boring, and I guess that put me off. But I finally grabbed it from the library and found that I quite enjoyed it. Taking place during the Napoleonic Wars, it centers on two magicians, the older Mr. Norell and his young 'apprentice' Jonathan Strange. They want to bring back English magic, and put it to work for their country fighting Napoleon. But of course, they have wildly divergent personalities, which eventually clash. Overall, I really liked this book, Clarke's writing style did a nice pastiche of early 1800s novels, and she sets up a very nice internal consistency of how magic works (or doesn't work) in her world, and I very much like her mythology of Faerie and the Raven King.

Number 14 is Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Ok, I honestly cannot remember if I'd read this puppy before, as a friend of mine had lent me the first Thursday Next book, The Eyre Affair , but I did enjoy that, and enjoyed this one too. Fforde's world is a strange mix of sci-fi, crime novels and a degree in English literature. Kinda reminds me of the comic book Fables, in that fictional characters have a life of their own outside of the works we see them in. Anyway, I like these books for their literariness, but I find Thursday to be a bit of a cypher herself; somehow I just don't find her that interesting of a main character.

Number 15 is The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. The Wuthering Heights anger management self-help group was worth the entire price of admission of this book.