Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Happy Mother's day to everyone, and happy reading to you if you are so inclined! Today's book pick is one of a very popular series (ever heard of it? ha!) which my son and I have read together. Half-Blood Prince stands out in my mind because I actually had goose pimples as we read it. The events in this installment take a very dark turn, and Voldemoort's evil seems unstoppable. Most memorably, Harry and Dumbledore brave corpse filled lakes and caves to retrieve a valuable object. Rowling answers some questions in this book but leaves the reader with many more. For instance, the gut wrenching scene at the end left both of us open-mouthed with only one word hanging from our lips: why? Our family is excited about the July release of the film (finally!). I hope I like this movie as much as The Prisoner of Azkaban--the best one of the films so far, better even than Order of the Phoenix. I've never been a fan of fantasy/science fiction, but I make an exception for the Harry Potter books. Good writing is good writing.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

It's a lazy, hot Saturday here in FL. I recently read Secrets to Happiness by Sarah Dunn, a good Manhattan story with quirky characters. Now, I'm reading Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas. It's a young adult novel set during WWII and concerns a young girl's perspective on a nearby Japanese prison camp. So far, I'm enjoying reading it, but not nearly as much as I loved reading The Blind Assassin a few years ago. I don't remember particulars about this book, just that I couldn't put it down and that it contained a novel within a novel. If The Blind Assassin were a person, it would be that girl in college that you loved talking to, only you've forgotten her name. But she was the funniest, best, most scintillating conversationalist you've ever known. Other Atwood books have left me cold, but this one--this one is best friend material.