I Read: The Night Circus

Most of my reading choices come from my Kindle “Recommended For You” list. I pick three or four, try out the samples, and buy the first one that clicks. I was sort of dubious about The Night Circus as it sounded like it would be either really, really good or really, really cheesy – but something drew me in. The cover, maybe? I dunno. But I tried the sample and was hooked within five pages.

I love, love, loved this book and thanks to some stress related insomnia, devoured it. I read fully the last half of it, highly appropriately, in the very wee hours of last night. It’s truly, truly a beautiful escape – which is exactly what I needed. I was nervous about the ending, there didn’t seem to be any way that it could resolve that wouldn’t be either a tremendous cliché, a colossal disappointment, or both. But it came through. Perhaps it was pure old-fashioned magic, but it ended beautifully.

Maybe at another time I would have found this story too cheesy, but it came to me at the right moment and made me want to slip on a red scarf and join the rêveurs.

He Reads: Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear

Another triumph for sound effects. P has asked me to read this book to him no less than five times this weekend (in normal toddler standards, that’s like 5million times) – he loves that I do all of the sound effects. Predictably, the hissing of the boa constrictor is his favorite. After I read it, sometimes he’ll go through and “read” it and do the noises himself. It should be noted that the noise for each animal is read on the page *prior* to the animal’s picture – and still, P matches the correct noise to the correct animal because he is a super genius. Or he’s just getting it all wrong and this is coincidence, but I’m going to remain optimistic.