I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but I haven’t given more than an idle thought or two to my thesis in the past month. Or rather, I’ve thought about it, but most of that thinking has been along the lines of, I really should get to thinking about this.

I’ve got tons of work to do, I know, and stacks of serious-type books to get through, but just now I’m giving myself a break and reading a few novels I’ve been meaning to get to. I started with two by Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder and The Death Instinct. I picked them up over the winter and have been looking forward to them for months. The jacket blurbs sounded very promising and not a little Caleb-Carr-esque, but I’m sorry to report that they did not live up to my expectations. The writing was just bad … the plots were contrived, the dialogue was pretentious, and the protagonist was irritating as all get-out. Interestingly, the author is the husband of the original Tiger Mom; I wonder what she thinks of his efforts.

Yesterday I started Stephen King’s 11.22.63, a book that’s been lying on my shelf for far too long, and I was hooked from the first page. Not only does he tell a great story, but he’s also a fantastic writer. The words and the way he puts them together are at least as captivating as the narrative itself. I can tell already that this is a book I won’t be glad to finish.