Reading Is Fun...damental

I'm on a reading kick lately.
I don't say that to mean I never like to read but, yanno, with life kicking me in my non-existant testicles, I haven't had much time or inclination to sit down with a novel and just read.
However, I work with books and a certain book caught my attention and I found myself taking it home and reading it all in just two evenings.
Of all freaking things, it was a romance novel.
I hate romance novels. It's just my own personal preference....usually.
I hate how they are all alike. Girl meets boy, girl hates boy but secretly loves boy, girl pretends to fight her feelings, girl falls in love with boy...then something happens and boy rescues girl. blah blah blah
So, the fact that I chose this book to kick start my reading was surprising and a little embarrassing but it had an element in it that I've been finding interesting lately; time travel.
I don't know why but I love to read about time travel. Especially when regular people accidentally get sent back to some primitive era or when a Medieval dude gets thrust into our modern society and has to learn about cars, computers, rock music and women in trousers. I love that stuff!
So, I started with an easy read by Jude Deveraux called A Knight in Shining Armor. Yes. Lame. I know.
It was a story about a spineless chick who defined herself by the man she was with. She put up with an asshole who treated her like shit, used her for her money and then abandoned her somewhere in England.
Then her tears somehow summon a Baron knight from the 1500s with whom she is forced to act as a tour guide to the 20th century. Hilarity ensues.
Then, somehow, they are both returned to his time and then she must contend with fleas and lice, bathing infrequently and chamber pots.
Of course, I find this stuff interesting. What I didn't find interesting is the theme of the book. The main character was a woman who was incomplete without a man to love her.
I was hoping at the end she would find herself and realize that she can be happy without some guy at her side but instead she just meets another guy.

Lame. Yet, I read it in two days.

The next book was another genre that I've always stayed away from; science fiction.
Science fiction and fantasy have never turned my crank. I'm not into weird outerspace crap or dragons and faeries.
So, I found myself reading another book that passed my desk.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
It takes place in the near future, 2048. They have figured out time travel and they send a student to the 1300s and she gets caught in the Black Plague while all of her collegues are stuck in 2048 Oxford in the middle of their own epidemic.
It's a great perspective of the death and destruction that the Black Plague left in it's wake.

Now, I'm reading Orson Scott Card. I've never read him before but of course I've heard of him....who hasn't?
Enchantment is about a modern Russian born, American scholar who gets spirited back into the 8th century after kissing a princess in an enchanted forest. Sounds a little fruity, I know but the guy seems to think so too.

So far, it's interesting. Who knows where this will lead me.

Read any good time travel books lately?

Posted by De at May 13, 2005 10:57 AM