Friday reads

Hey friends.

January through March is always a little wacky in RuLand, and it's gone double for this year. But soon things will simmer down and I will return to blogging, reading, and writing. Won't it be grand?

In the meantime, I have a couple of reading recommendations for you all.

1. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

My first Gillian Flynn novel was Gone Girl--something I assume is true for most of you. I liked Dark Places almost as much and have definitely thought about it a lot more.

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice" of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.

2. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Have I fangirled over Fangirl yet? No? Ugh, I'm remedying that right now.

I read Fangirl a few months ago and recently re-read it. I don't even know were to begin.

One, I want the Simon Snow books to be real. So bad.

Two, the romantic element of the book really did take me by surprise. By the time it crept up on Cath, it was also creeping up on me. How often are you actually surprised when two characters get together? I think this is the first book that has ever done that for me.

And finally, it's an awesome depiction of college life that you don't usually see: an (actually, not pseudo-ly) awkward girl who doesn't exactly know how to leave the nest. So many college-set books are really high school books or adult books set in an artificial setting -- meaning, everyone is either eating at the cafeteria or living in apartments, completely self-sufficient. Just, no. Where are all the college kids who seem like real college kids, I ask you?

They're living in the dorms with Cath, that's where.


If you haven't read it yet, you are missing out. Go! Do!


Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan . . .

But for Cath, being a fan is her life — and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

What have you been reading, people? Tell me, I'm so close to freedom I can taste it!