Normally, I don’t give bad reviews. If an author has enough talent to manage to get a book published, then they’ve done more than I have. I’ll say I didn’t necessarily love a book, but I have to really hate it to tell the whole interweb.

Here is such a book.

I’ll start by saying, I loved this author’s “Diary” series.
Mr. Darcy’s Diary, Colonel Brandon’s Diary, Captain Wentworth’s Diary, and so on. This one, not so much.

The premise is it’s what happens after Pride and Prejudice. And in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I didn’t finish it. In the first 50 pages, not much happens. Darcy and Elizabeth are married and Darcy takes her to France for a honeymoon. Darcy has many brooding looks and strange behavior that puzzles Elizabeth. She meets some of his Parisian friends. We know from the title that Darcy is a vampire. In some incredibly bad foreshadowing, we find out that his Parisian friends are also vampires. It was pretty boring. Not enough dialog, too much exposition.

Here’s what really convinced me to close it for good: Elizabeth mentions that she gave Darcy a crucifix as a gift. Seriously?! A Crucifix? Why?! Why would she give him a crucifix. THEY AREN’T CATHOLIC! The only possible reason she would give him a crucifix is to give the author another way to show the reader that Darcy is a vampire, while the witless Elizabeth remains clueless. Blah!

Seriously, read the Diaries.

To all library users:

Before you go into the library, please make sure you have your library card. Or some ID. Something.

Please do not walk into the library with nothing to prove your identity and expect to be able to check out books. Please don’t expect that the person at the desk will automatically know who you are.

Thank you. That is all.

As predicted by Mike, I don’t really remember posting that whole thing about the Ambien last night. Apparently, I also changed my facebook status to say how much I love my pharmacist.

You know how some people, when they take a medicine for a while, tend to get sort of immune to it? It doesn’t work so well after a while? Yeah, well, as my father puts it I am “non-standard”.

My sister (hi Edis! *wave*) can take a Benadryl for her allergies and go on about her day. I’ve heard tell she can take 2 and suffer no ill effects. Me? If I took two Benadryl, I’d have to be somewhere where I don’t have to drive for a day or two and there is a nice comfy bed and pillow. I’m down for the count.

All this is to say, I took half an Ambien tonight. Used to be, I could take a whole Ambien and be down for 12 hours and little groggy afterward. I had to cut back to half when it started cutting into my life. I took half an Ambien and it would take a few hours to really kick in.

Lately, that kick-in time has been getting shorter. I took that half an Ambien tonight and figured I would have time to rinse the dishes and load the dishwasher and take a quick shower. Not so, little grasshopper. By the time I had finished the dishes, I was feeling the tell-tale dizzy head.

So what did I do? Did I go get in my pajamas and crawl in with my book? Did I lie down with one of my favorite sleepy time movies?

NO! I came here to tell you all about it. And you have no idea how hard it is to type without slurring when the Ambien kicks in.

I wore my Def Leppard concert shirt to the grocery store today. (The concert was awesome, by the way).

As I was in line to check out, I noticed a teenager wandering around in an Iron Maiden shirt. Pretty soon he strolled past me and said, “I like your shirt.” I said, “Hey, thanks. I like yours.”

That’s all. Just a little concert shirt love in the grocery store.

I finished Olive Kitteridge today. Thank God. It was really depressing. It was mostly about this 70-something woman in a tiny town in Maine. She was really not a nice person throughout her life, and now she doesn’t understand why it’s coming back to bite her on the butt.

I read Amy and Isabelle a few months ago and really liked it. This one was written in the same dry style, but it was just really depressing. I guess a story where most of the characters think about dying of old age all the time just has less hope and happiness than a book about a mother and daughter.

Finally! A book worth staying up late to read!

Mike bought me The Shadow of the Wind for Christmas a few years ago. I liked it, but I was often confused. But, I liked it enough to get on the waiting list for this one.

Wowie Wow Wow! I loved it. It’s beautiful and creepy and scary and awesome!

David Martin (say that like he’s Spanish, cause he is) is a young wanna be journalist who gets a plum job writing serials for the newspaper. This doesn’t make his coworkers like him much, but he still has one friend on staff, Pedro Vidal.

David gets a bizarre invitation from a French publisher to work for him, but he ignores it and goes on to publish many penny dreadfuls under a pen name and gets wildly wealthy. He buys a creepy old house and holes up to write. Every once in a while he gets another invitation from the French publisher.

After this, I can’t tell you anything without giving it all away. Just know that at this point it gets really paranormal. It was awesome. Wait, did I say that already?