unfinished book ramblings.

Already July?? Ridiculous!

So I've been- what else is new- kind of slacking on my book list. It started to take a backseat to figuring out my life and my move to Chicago. (Which, by the way, I'm doing.)

I did get about halfway through The Terror, though, and I'm really loving it. Granted, first of all I had to get past the really irritating point of not being able to keep any of the characters straight from each other, but that's gotten better. There is this element of the supernatural and total fantasy to it, even though it's a period drama-- like, there's some unnamed creature/force stalking these iced-in ships. But, somehow, it doesn't seem too fake and hokey. (Yet. I could end up eating my words.) I think the author was really clever in establishing the crew's constant, underlying sense of panic and paranoia at being stranded in a completely unknown and hostile environment. In that frame of mind, this beast or demon or whatever starts to read as a witch hunt. No one knows what it actually is, no one has ever seen it, and we don't yet know if it's just a figment of consumption-crazed imaginations, or if it's really the work of a crewman or one of the two random Inuit people they brought onboard as aides.
(Sidenote about said Inuits: in the book, which is written to follow different crew members in different chapters without being in first person, they spell it "Esquimaux". It honestly took me about 20 pages to figure out what they were talking about.)
I'm excited to see where the rest of this novel goes. I need to start being more productively lazy-- as in, read more of my book list, pack for Chicago, get rid of things I've had since middle school, and keep working on a coffee table that I'm refinishing. It's sitting in our garage, looking very sad and covered in dust from sanding it down.

I've also got more books to add! One of my best friends from high school Maura has recommended The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and the other book by that author which I can't think of the name for right now. I know it just came out as a movie? So I'll have to avoid that until I can read it first. Movies are never as good as the books.
And Seth very emphatically answered my request with any and all Christopher Moore. I can't remember if he specifically named a certain one, but he made it seem like Moore's entire body of work would be right up my alley. Hopefully it's as horrible and irreverent as I am.
PS regarding Seth: I can't comment on his Tumblr because I don't have a Tumblr. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME, INTERNET. sigh.

...okay, time to go retrieve my cinnamon toast from the toaster, from where it has been glaring balefully at me for the past 20 minutes.