Reading

I'm behind in updates, so I'll go ahead and add possibly the most boring update first: books I've read recently.

My book club read The Chosen as our December selection. I thought the book was interesting, I did learn more about that time in history (1940s) and also Judaism. But, I found the overall style unsettling. I kept waiting for something very bad to happen, and it never did. I got a little bit bogged down in some of the intricate explanations of what different religious readings (might) mean. I think I gave this book three stars on Goodreads, but I wish I could've given it 2.5.

Over the Christmas holidays, I read Dead Until Dark. I'd seen glowing reviews for the book (and series), and had seen ads for the HBO show True Blood, so I wanted to give it a try. My main complaint was that the author sporadically uses poor grammar to indicate a character's southern accent. I find that incredibly irritating when I'm reading. I know where the book is set (small Louisiana town), I know many of the characters probably have some sort of accent, but throwing in a couple of instances of poor grammar to convey a "southern" accent? Bleah! I will admit that I will probably never watch the show because I can't stand Anna Paquin's fake southern accent, but at least I can imagine an actual accent in my head when I'm reading. . .without a random "don't got no"s (for example). I imagine the main character quite a bit like one of my cousins, actually, though she grew up in fairly rural Alabama, rather than Louisiana. I was honestly surprised to read that the author was raised in Mississippi and currently lives in Arkansas. If the poor grammar had at least been consistent, it wouldn't have bothered me. Anyway, I did still like the story enough to want to read the next one in the series, and I'm interested to check out her other series, which begins with Grave Sight.