Book Binge

I'm about to turn the heel on sock #2, but I've taken a little break from knitting and gone on a small reading binge instead. I've managed to read 3 books in 3 days. The books are totally different from each other, and I enjoyed them all. They were:

• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, the second-latest book in the No. 1 ladies Detective Series. I'm not normally much of a mystery fan, but these aren't really mysteries anyway, and they're a lot of fun. They make me want to go to Botswana.
• The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls's memoir of growing up with 2 very eccentric parents. Dad was an alcoholic, Mom was an (probably bipolar) artist, and they both had odd ideas about how to raise children. I like how Walls is able to relate all the details of a very difficult childhood without ever seeming to feel sorry for herself.
• The Sea of Trolls. This one is a fantasy, probably aimed mostly at the young adult market. It's a saga that takes place in about the 8th Century AD, and includes trolls, dragons, and some really great characters. In fact, the sword and sworcery aspects definitely take a third place behind character development and real moral issues. The author has taken care to make the story historically accurate as well. And the book includes several Irish Wolfhounds in supporting roles.

We also took the Things to see a movie today, because there's only so much time you can spend in the pool, it's too hot to play outside, and they will eventually drive us crazy in the house. We saw Cars, which wasn't my favorite Pixar movie, but it was cute. The Things liked it.