So I was busily using this keen LJ feature called “Memories” to categorize and quick-link all my LJ entries on movies, TV shows, writing, books, etc, etc, when I realized I haven’t written much about books. It’s not that I haven’t been reading them, I have–what else is there to do while you’re walking down the sidewalk in San Francisco?

I did get to the library and checked out some books, as I mentioned previously, mostly out of the juvenile reading section. This may be part of my summer fluff-mode thing. I’m just not up for serious movies, or adult reading.

I’ve been writing journal entries about what I’ve read, I just haven’t been writing them in my LJ. I think it’s because every time I’m moved to write about what I’m reading, I’m somewhere like deep in the forest hiking or up 30,000 feet in a plane. And then I’m too lazy to transcribe what I’ve written long hand onto the computer. Books I read and wrote about elsewhere: “The Fancy Dancer” by Patricia Nell Warren and “Dive” by Stacey Donovan.

“The Fancy Dancer” is a book I’ve owned for 20 years and have read many times in that span, but I got something totally new out of reading it while I was in Guernville in May. It’s about a priest in Montana who has an affair with a half-breed mechanic. It explores some controversial issues around using sexual metaphors in religion (an example of such a metaphor would be “the bride of Christ”, but in this case the metaphor is homoerotic).

“Dive” I read on the plane heading down to Arizona. It was about a 15-year old girl who’s father is dying of a rare blood disease. It has the most beautiful use of similes I’ve ever read, used to get across this anxiety-laden, claustrophobic feeling of having a family member dying (and in case you’re wondering how that fits into my “fluff mode”, I checked it out because it was supposedly a teen lesbian romance. The love interest doesn’t even appear until 150 pages into the book!)

I more recently discovered a fun little teen book series by Tamora Pierce called The Song of the Lioness series, which tells the story of a young girl growing up in a mythical land not unlike Medieval Europe. She and her brother are each being sent off to school, her to learn magic and him to earn knighthood. But each wants to do what the other sibling is being sent to do, so they trade places. She pretends to be a boy and goes to the palace to learn how to be a knight. I’m not usually into historical fantasy, but with a spirited little cross-dressing tomboy, how could I resist?

I’ve decided that libraries are a Good Thing. However, bookstores are also a good thing. I ordered the four-volume set of the Harry Potter books from amazon.co.uk. My friend Gloria was supposed to buy me “Philospher’s Stone” when she was in England. Then she comes home with two copies of “Order of the Phoenix”. I assumed one was for me, and then she gives me this weird look and says she bought the other copy for her ex-girlfriend.

Whatever. As soon as I get through the first four books, I’ll buy my own friggin’ copy of “Phoenix”. Who can resist a story about a cranky, morally ambiguous teen-aged boy?