What Some Would Call Lies

I was going to read A Streetcar Named Desire but in the chaos brought on by the recent move, I can’t seem to locate the book.  So instead I read James Patterson’s Witch & Wizard.

Patterson is one of my guilty pleasures.  He writes airport book – books that you can always find in an airport gift shop and will be able to finish before you arrive at your destination.  I love the Alex Cross series, and I often breeze through one of his books as a pallet cleanser between “serious” novels.

Witch & Wizard is the first in a young adult series that Patterson is writing.  It’s about two kids (Witsy and Whit) that are kidnapped by the New Order, a form of government that has taken over the world.  In captivity they discover that they have magical powers and that is the reason they are a threat to the N.O.

While I like a good dystopian, end-of-the-word-as-we-know-it, kind of novel (Orwell’s 1984 or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451) I’m not a huge fan of the novel series.  Too often, you just get a rushed, watered down story because the author has book four or five in mind.

This book actually started out with promise; I was excited to see that I was reading a book that could possible rival some of those mentioned in the previous paragraph – and then we learn that the world’s political system collapsed literally overnight and was replaced by the New Order (lame).  And then the two main characters run in and out of other worldly dimensions (lame).

I got a “This is a new Harry Potter” feeling when I was reading this book, and quite frankly if it wasn’t written by James Patterson I would never pick up book two…but I’m going to give this series one more opportunity to woo me.

For Christmas, Jennifer gave me Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.  It was on my Amazon.com wish list.  I read about the book in Time magazine, and threw it on my list sometime in 2008, I think.

This is the 3rd book I’ve read in 2010.