Wednesday's Reads: Like A Comfy Blanket

My Wednesday's reads have been a bit lacking. All because I can not find anything good to read. I pick it up, I put it down.  I have not been satisfied with anything lately. I haven't even been able to finish an audio book.


Case in point:

goodreads.com

Although funny, quirky and kind of interesting (like when the main character meets up with Sigmund Freud on the same night that he falls in love at first sight with a girl he sees at an opera. Freud happens to know the girl and, really, chaos ensues). But at 500 pages I felt like I was really committing to something every time I picked it up and I just wasn't ready for that yet. So at about 150 pages in I closed it for the last time. Maybe another time..

goodreads.com

So this one...I think I'm over the whole V.C. Andrews dysfunctional families stories. I read the Flowers in The Attic series when I was younger. I saw this on the shelf and thought "why not?". At about 35 pages I realized why not. It sucks. I left it on the kitchen table for about three days then right before writing this I took about 20 minutes to skim through it. It's basically about two sisters from a wealthy family in Kentucky. One's good and one's bad of course. There's a tragic event which then seems to make the bad sister even crazier and she sets her sister up in an even crazier scheme. It's all very...well, crazy. And not very good.

When this happens, when I can't find a good novel to turn to. Who do I turn to? George Lucas that's who. Or rather Aaron Allston, Karen Traviss and K.W. Jeter. These are the writers (among others) who make the Star Wars universe come alive, who make Han Solo, Leia Organa-Solo and Luke Skywalker seem like old friends. I pick up one of these novels and I know that (most of the time) I'm not going to be disappointed. I open one up and the words curl around me like an old comfy blanket. I always finish one of these novels.

Who I turned to this time was Aaron Allston. He wrote Outcast which is the first in a nine-book series called Fate of the Jedi.  This one has Luke Skywalker being made an example of by New Chief of State Daala for failing to foresee and prevent Jacen Solo's descent to the dark side and the subsequent havoc that caused. Luke Skywalker is then banned from Coruscant for 10 years. He chooses to use that time to follow the path of learning that Jacen Solo took to discover what went wrong. For those of you who may not be in the know, Han and Leia had three kids and Luke has one. This story is set when Jaina Solo is about in her early thirties (I think) and Ben (Luke's son) is about 16.

aaahhh...comforting, familiar and funny. Slam dunk!

relax,
paulina