More Book Stuff - Heavy Books

As any of you who go down to the bottom of this page and look at my "GoodReads" widget (at least for now, though future visitors to this page won't see them), I'm currently reading two books:  Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. by Barry Cunliffe and Tess Gerritsen's The Keepsake.

Now, I'm normally not one to read two books at one time.  For some reason, it just annoys me trying to follow two books at the same time, though it's not quite as bad if one is non-fiction and the other is fiction.  It's just a quirk of mine that I don't like to do it.  I concentrate on one book and one book only.

So why am I doing that this time?

Because Europe Between the Oceans is a fricking heavy book!  It's more of a textbook than it is a regular hardcover book.  It's quite large in size, which accounts for it having fewer pages (it's still near 500, though).  When I hold it like a regular book, my wrist starts hurting after a while.  I can read it in my lap, but a lot of time I like to lie down and read, and holding the book can get quite annoying at that time.  It's a very interesting book, almost a geographic history of Europe and the various peoples who inhabited it throughout history.  It's fascinating stuff.

I put off reading it for a while because I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to read it.  See, I like to bring my book to work and read it on lunch, as well as at home.  But there was no way in hell I was carting this monstrosity in my bag!  Getting it home was painful enough!

So, I decided to read a paperback novel at work instead.  That would be The Keepsake.  I've loved Gerritsen's work ever since Curled Up With a Good Book got her first five Jane Rizzoli books on their reading list.  I snapped them up, having heard good things but not being familiar with her at all.  I fell in love with them with the first book I read, The Surgeon.  I got lucky, since I would have to read and review all of those books even if I had hated the first one.  So I'm glad I loved them instead.

Anyway, The Keepsake is now my work reading, and I'm getting through it fairly quickly (already half-way done, started it earlier this week).  Here's my dilemma, though.  This book is so hard to put down that I keep getting the urge to read it at home.  So far, I've resisted, and hopefully I'll be able to resist until I'm done with it.  But it's so good that it's almost painful.

Thankfully, I will be going out to dinner tonight by myself while the wife goes with her friends to the Bryan Adams concert, and there's no way I'm lugging that history book along with me!  So I'll bring this one instead.

Should make good supper-time reading.

Of course, both books will eventually be reviewed and I'll post them here when they go up on Curled Up. But I can already tell you, unless it falls completely off the rails, The Keepsake is definitely a keeper.

So's the other one, by the way.  But fewer of you will be interested in that one.