Bookish Thoughts

Thanks to a bunch of used book sales in the area, I've been going back and revisiting a bunch of books I first read in high school. The latest one is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird , which I read in 9th grade. I was surprised both by how little of the plot I remembered and how vividly I remembered some smaller scenes. There are bits in this book, probably parts that my teacher decided had important symbolic value, that I can still picture in full surround sound. The inside of Mrs. Dubose's bedroom where Jem spends afternoon's reading to her while she weans herself off morphine. The courtroom, packed and silent waiting for the jury to return a verdict. And, strangely, the Finch's neighbor peeing out the second story window. At the same time, I'd managed to completely forget the contents of Tom Robinson's day in court, or Bob Ewell's reaction to it. And Boo Radley's part in everything remained as mysterious to me as the first time ...

Good God, this book took a long time to read. It's not that it was particularly bad; it's just that Candy Crush was usually more interesting. This book is silly and riddled with plot holes, but entertaining in its own way I'd been vaguely aware of this trilogy for most of my life. Around the time the prequel trilogy was announced, one of my parents told me the basic plot of what happened after the original movies, at least according to these books. Well, they told me that Leia and Han got married, Leia gave birth to twins, and Luke started a new school for Jedis. Since the new movies were starting to come out, I assumed I wouldn't have to wait long for this trilogy to come out as a movie either. How young and foolish I was. Now that we've been promised new movies, I have very little faith that they will either cover this material or be very good. So when Kevin picked up the first two books of The Thrawn Trilogy at a used book sale, I figure...

I'm not sure why I expected anything different from a book that opens with a death, but I was surprised by how deeply sad and painful JK Rowling's first adult novel was. It wasn't sad in a way that makes you cry - I didn't shed a single tear while reading this book. It goes deeper than that, getting a vice-like grip on your heart and making you wonder if anyone can ever actually be happy. The scope of The Casual Vacancy is incredibly small, focusing on the inhabitants of a single town in England.The lives of the townsfolk are incredibly intertwined, such that all of their actions and decisions seem to affect each other. The death of Barry Fairbrother, beloved town Councillor, creates ripples and triggers a slow unraveling of the fabric of life in this small town. Fairbrother was fighting to keep a rehabilitation clinic open to serve the needs of the low-income addicts in the town. Once he dies, the group that wants to see the clinic closed jumps on the...