I haven’t read a book that isn’t required for class in for about four weeks now. I tried to pick up Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon while we were in San Diego (I had packed it for my traveling reading), and I just couldn’t get through it.

While it looks like a good story, when You and I picked it out at the book store, we only read the back cover. Unfortunately, though, we should have actually read a few pages to see. It turns out, this story is written very much in the style of the Victorians, and while I don’t mind that, I wasn’t expecting it.

With in the first few pages, it was so obvious that it was Victorian. Not only is there capitalization in the middle of sentences— which always distracts me—it is also a story-within-a-story, much like Frankenstein. Also, the writing style is very old fashioned. So, while it’s not bad, it wasn’t a story I could read with distractions all around me, and since I was reading in the airport, there was nothing but distractions.

When I got home, I just never picked up the book, and when I decided to read for fun this week, I picked a completely different type of book.

The book I am reading is as close to romance you can get while still being in the fiction section. The Virgin’s Lover by Philippa Gregory is set at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. After only one day, I am halfway through the book, and I feel really bad for the wife of Queen Elizabeth’s Master of Horse. Either she’s going to be put aside (divorced) or killed. It’s inevitable, really. This book is set in actual events of the past, even though the story is all made up.

It just makes me love historical fiction more, you know.

—”Ain’t that Unusual,” A Boy Named Goo: Goo Goo Dolls