The Little Book

I am so over time travel.  After 17 episodes of Season 5 of LOST, Star Trek and this book, that's it.  I'm done with time travel of any sort for months if not years.

This book should have been right up my alley, essentially a historical novel but with an added element of time travel.  But I guess all the debate over whether whatever happened happens versus alternate universes finally fried my brain because I could not get into this novel.  And having forced myself to finish it I can't recommend it.  

It certainly proved the LOST producers point that time travel without characters you care about can be boring.  My biggest problem with The Little Book was that I just didn't care about Wheeler Burden or any of his ancestors.  My second biggest problem with the book is the focus on Freud and psycho-analysis.  Blah, blah, blah, that stuff doesn't interest me in the least and the contrivances with respect to Weezie were gross and unnecessary.  

This novel has been 30 years in the making.  I think that's part of the problem.  It was trying to be too many things at once -- a period piece; sci fi; a character study; a mixture of the real and the fictional.  It did none of them well.

The Lace Reader

This is an unusual book for me.  It's what I'd call a woman's book, but it's not chick lit and it's not romance.  Still I can't imagine a man really enjoying it.  The book is set in Salem, Massachusetts.  I visited Salem about this time last year, and I like reading books set in places I've been, so it definitely satisfied on that level.

This is a very psychological novel and strongly involves the supernatural.  It's not a book I'd recommend without qualifications, but it was a good read.  The way the author plays with narrative is interesting, but most of all, the characters are well-drawn so that you care about their outcome.  I think the end was more disquieting than satisfying for me.  Still I'm glad I read The Lace Reader.  And for the record, I'd never get lace read for myself.  Not my scene.