Jessica Darling

I'm cranky about all those people who think Megan McCafferty's Charmed Thirds should have been just like the other two Jessica Darling books. It's bizarre, and I can only assume some of those people were young. Because of course McCafferty's first two books were for teens, and they end with Jessica seeming to understand everything. And that's appropriate for a book written for teens; you'd like to think that after all that soul-searching, Jessica would have found some clarity in the end. Charmed Thirds is brilliant because it is written from a adult perspective. Jessica doesn't know everything, and she realizes that in the end, we all die alone. Life is uncertain, and there's value to living in the moment.
Is Charmed Thirds a perfect book? Lord, no. But it isn't bad, just because it's more contemplative. If people can't realize that McCafferty was writing a different kind of book for a more mature audience, then...sigh.
Speaking personally for a moment, I liked the book because I like the characters, and I had the same "we all die alone" epiphany this spring, and because I had a few Jessica-and-Len Levy moments in my college career, too.
Aside from that, I haven't been blogging because I'm still reading Betty Neels. Not much to say.

from Betts to Betts

Yesterday I woke up, went to the local coffee place to pick up cocoa and breakfast, went to work for 13 hours, and went home and directly to bed. Today I got up and went straight back to work - thankfully, for only a few hours. I was back home by lunchtime. Today I turned on the TV for a few hours, and to my delight I found not only an America's Next Top Model marathon, but college gymnastics.
As you can imagine, I haven't been reading much. I don't think I've read anything aside from Betty Neels romances in thelast week or so. I finish one and reach for the next - they're all interchangeable, anyway. Occasionally they're funny (The Vicar's Daughter, page 50: "The peculiar feeling she had been experiencing for the last hour or so wasn't a cold in the head, it was love!"), if incredibly cliched and bourgeois.