I just finished rereading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the umpteenth time. As much as I love reading, and collecting books, I don’t actually reread that often – too many other good books I need to dedicate my time to! It’s only the ones that are really good, or really special, that I’ll revisit again and again. The Harry Potter series is one of these. J.K. Rowling just puts this amazing sense of awe and wonder into her books that I just can’t seem to imitate in my own work. I love all of the characters, especially Neville, and I love that I never quite knew who the real villain was while I was reading any of the books for the first time. I plan on rereading the other 6 books, and I look forward to visiting them again.

After that was done, I started a new book, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I’m not quite 200 pages into it (it stretches past 400) and I love it. In case you haven’t read it, in this book Clary Fray is suddenly able to see demons and demon hunters, even when they’re hiding themselves from human eyes. Just as their trying to figure out what her deal is, Clary’s mother is attacked and disappears. Now Clary not only has to figure out why she’s suddenly developed “sight”, but she needs to find her mother and uncover her own memories that she can’t even access. This book was suggested to me by a woman in my MFA program, and I’m going to have to give her a hug for it when I see her in January. The main character is a girl I can get behind, and while my heart isn’t beating out of my chest like with The Hunger Games the pacing is still quick and exciting. And there are so many mysteries for me to guess at, which are also doing a great job of pulling me along. As a young adult novel it’s pretty obvious that there’s going to be some pairing up, if not in this book than in one of the sequels. The way the romance plays out is almost always too obvious and boring for me, and City of Bones looks like it’s going to follow the same track. Unless Clare decides to take a sudden twist – fall for the guy in glasses!

The next books on my list include Indigo by Alice Hoffman, which I’m reading for my MFA. And unless City of Bones takes a sudden downward spiral I’ll be picking up the sequel, City of Ashes. I also want to get a book we’ve recently gotten in the used bookstore, Leviathan by Scott Westerfield. This was another MFA-peep suggestion – WWI but steam punk! Awesome.