Friday, January 22, 2010

Bipolar Legislative Disorder

Because a $2.9 billion state budget shortfall in the legislative session and super-depressing happenings in Congress and the Supreme Court mandate a lot of work-related heavy reading, I'm back on my fiction-only kick for the time being. (I think I was on it for most of grad school, too. Oh well. The book moods -- they come, they go... C'est la vie.)

Who knew Book Four in the Artemis Fowl series, The Opal Deception, would be slightly traumatic?

What's up with the magic-themed children's stories these days having sad, emotional death scenes of major characters?

It was, though, an excellent tool for escapism. The crazy, evil villain from Book Two comes back, intent on revenge. She plots to kill off not only the teenage genius/criminal mastermind title character, but the elves, fairies, and centaur who helped him defeat her. So she schemes to alert the human world to the existence of the fairy world, to start an interspecies war that will eventually allow her to rule the planet. A tale as old as time.

The larger story, of course, is Artemis Fowl's coming-of-age -- making new and different friends, being at a crossroads (whether to remain a criminal mastermind or become an honest kid), etc. It is, after all, a book series aimed at tweens.

Hooray for the Bildungsroman.

Next up: more medieval mysteries on order from the library. And Netflix movies. Mucho, mucho Netflix movies...

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