two book bits

finished jerry spinelli's stargirl and i highly recommend it. it's a sort of fable set in high school, a tale with a moral, but it doesn't hammer you over the head. spinelli's a talented writer who accurately reveals the heart, mind, feelings, thoughts of a teenage boy through the voice of the narrator. it's for a young adult audience - and by "young adult" the book industry means "teenager" - so it's written at a level that makes it an easy read for an adult reader. and, the themes will be familiar to adults and the action somewhat predictable, but it still holds together through the sincerity [sp?] of the voice and the simple setting - which rings genuine because it is so simple. i read it over the course of a few days, but the typical young adult or adult reader could knock it out in a few consecutive hours.

currently reading the witch is dead by shirley damsgaard. i guess you'd call it a mystical mystery. the main characters are women with psychic powers ranging from rune reading to mediating for the dead to communing with fairies to healing the sick. i picked it up at the 1/2 price bookstore. i remember picking it up and putting it down and returning to pick it up & put it down again a couple more times before finally picking it up and purchasing it. i was for some reason compelled to make it my own. i realized it was part of a series and realized it was not the first book in the series, but until i started reading it did not realize it is the «ophelia & abby mysteries, no. 5». number 5 is quite a bit of ways into the series to be picking it up. i do usually like to start at the beginning of a series, but i'm already reading it now so what can i do? so far, it's not as well written as stargirl. i do realize that at the beginning of the 5th book in a series there's a bit of rehashing what would be known territory for the series regulars. but, it doesn't have to be so rote. kathy reichs, the author of the temperance brennen series, is a master at [re]introducing characters at the beginning of each book in her series through the art of "show, don't tell". it's a lesson that ms damsgaard would do well to heed.