What I've Been Reading During the Blogathon

I'm one of those people who always carries a book around, just in case I have a dull moment that needs filling over the course of my day. So yeah, even today, of all days, I've been paging through a couple of titles.

First is Olympia Vernon's Eden, a story about Maddy, a teenage girl sent to care for her estranged, dying aunt. It's written in a lyrical style, almost stream of consciousness at times, but never inaccessible. There's also a dark, malevolent current running underneath the whole thing. I'm about 70 pages in.

I actually did finish The Worthy: A Ghost's Story by Will Clarke, but just don't have the energy to write a longer review.

It's a nasty little piece of dark comedy narrated by a 19-year-old LSU boy who happens to be dead, murdered by his own fraternity brother, Ryan Hutchins. As one Ms. V. Mars said, "Every school has its obligatory psychotic jackass. He's ours." Ryan Hutchins beats up hookers and his girlfriend, snorts coke, abuses pledges, and commits multiple homicide, all the while being thought a great guy. And Conrad, our young ghost pledge, wants revenge in the worst possible way. I'm sure LSU really dug the publicity.

And there's a goat on the book jacket. Like the old adage that you can't show a gun in the first act unless it's fired by the third, you can't put a goat on the cover of a fraternity book unless something unnatural is going to happen to that goat by the end of the book.

That's just how it crumbles, cookie-wise.