I don't think I'm an obtuse reader. Maybe I am. I don't know. I zipped through House of Leaves without leaving a single subnote, endnote, footnote, or secret letter unread. I praised that title to my friends and experienced Danielewski withdrawal once I was done, finding nothing on the library shelves or in bookstores that filled my brain quite so well.

Imagine how good it felt to get my hands on this latest work, only to be left confused, frustrated, and generally dim-witted. I look forward to someone out there correcting my misconceptions and lack of understanding.

The book is meant to be read from cover to cover, twice, eight pages at a time, so that as a reader, you can get a sense of a rollicking thematically-repetitive relationship told from the perspective of both yellow-eyed Hailey and green-eyed Sam. The tale is told in verse, which is fun to read out loud, but burning rubber on my brain stem til there wasn't enough left for me to figure out exactly what the list of historical events on the left side of each page had to do with the tale told between the lines.

It's cool that Danielewski did his research: the verse shifts from era to era: sometimes Hailey and Sam are living out their love in Harlem and sometimes they're jitterbugging and sometimes they're rolling with California motorcycle gangs. Hey, I'm a big fan of time travel and super-dimensional interplanar visitation but I still walked out of this book feeling like I got pounded in the head with a tale I've heard once before: love goes round and round and the violence of it is what's ripping this world to pieces and opening up whole new ones.

Maybe I'm being too critical. I'll give it a try in ten years or so, or maybe twenty, when I'm more well-read and more mature and more patient. Danielewski, you're brilliant. Write me something new. I'm waiting! You're just moving too fast for this pea brain.

When special operations, literary detective, pet Dodo owner, daughter of a chronic time traveler and niece of eccentric inventors, Thursday Next is approached to help capture an evil villain aptly named Hades who’s suspected of stealing a Dickens’ manuscript, she barely thinks twice before saying yes.She soon finds herself in Swindon, her hometown, and a place full of memories, an ex-fiancé and more evil villains.

Jasper Fforde has crammed time-travel, books within books, tons of literary references, extinct pets, cops and robbers, detectives, magic and more into this humorous post-modern* novel. Characters travel on airships instead of airplanes, take vacations into classic gothic novels, join organizations focused on catching meteors and change their name to John Milton. Riots break out between fanatics of conflicting art movements.

This book has everything a lover of reading (especially the classics) could want, and more. It has a lot of what a fan of science fiction might enjoy as well. Devotees of detective novels won’t be disappointed either.

I’d seen the title of this book before someone recommended it to me. I must have known it had appeal to detective novel enthusiasts because I didn’t give it a second thought. When my daughter’s friend, who knew I enjoyed reading about time-travel, recommended it to me I thought I’d give it a go.

Unfortunately I didn’t get into it until well into the second half of the book. I’d mostly been confused by the plot and sub-plots, not to mention the names of characters. I spent a lot of time wondering why Fforde chose to name a police chief Braxton Hicks. And I’d heard the phrase runcible spoon, but didn’t know what it was nor why a doctor would be given that name.

In the end I sort of liked the book. I could see that it was probably really funny to someone who got all the jokes and literary allusions. I do believe that Jasper Fforde is probably a genius – but I’m just not the right person to appreciate it. It did make me want to re-read Jane Eyre though, and that’s a good thing.I plan on reading the second book in this series. I’m betting I like it better, now that I know what is going on, to a degree.

*I’d not understood what post modern meant until I read this book and the "ah-ha" light went on over my head.

Picking up not long after she left off in The Golden Hour, Williams' new adventure covers much more territory than the first.

Xanthe Alexander, while enjoying a short reprieve from her twin brother Xavier, is overly busy beating herself up. While out on the porch studying math to distract herself, she happens to notice something in the pond. Much to her shock, she realizes it's her best friend Rowan. As it turns out, she, Rowan and Nina have been called back to Owatannauk, Maine to assist in a special project: collecting historical items for customers of the curio shop.

After a brief run-through of Egyptian history, the trio are costumed and sent on their way. Xanthe, pleased to finally have something her brother does not, has lost sight of the mission almost before it's begun. When Xavier later shows up in Alexandria, she loses it completely. Though the children have been forewarned not to interact with anyone important, when Xanthe accidentally runs into Cleopatra while exiting an alleviator in a Temple of Isis, she finds it all too easy to let the girl believe she is the godess she's come to worship.

In secret, she begins making trips to see the princess as she ages, following her through history. Moody and distracted during the day, it doesn't take long for the others to figure out something's up. She feeds Rowan a lie to pass on to the others, but Xavier knows her better than that, and follows her on her next visit. Furious as she is at the discovery, it turns out to be the least of their troubles, as they get stuck overnight in the wrong year, and return to Owatannauk only to find they've created an alternate branch of the universe and are stuck out of time.

With the help of the alternates in the new Owatanauk, and Rowan and Nina, Xanthe and Xavier, or Isis and Osiris, scheme up an incredible plot to return history to its correct path, which is their only chance to undo the damage, and return to their own time.

A much heavier read than the first of the series, The Hour of the Cobra covers far more territory than The Golden Hour, but is equally enjoyable. I'd recommend reading them in order, only because most of the mystery of Owatannauk is told in the first book, though there is a brief summarization for the reader at the beginning of this story.

A tale of jealousy, friendship, teamwork and faith, The Hour of the Cobra is well worth a look.

**2006 USA Book New Finalist Children’s Book Award

Mary Cunningham’s second book in the Cynthia’s Attic series, reunites best friends, Cynthia and Gus for another trail-blazing adventure. The amateur sleuths have a nose for trouble and just can’t resist the urge to visit the mysterious old trunk in the attic. With non-stop action from cover to cover, there’s more than enough twists, turns and danger to keep readers up past well past bedtime.

Climbing the dusty stairs, the girls knew that although there were no ghosts, goblins or giant spiders in the attic, the real excitement was in great-grandmother’s old trunk. Expecting things to be just the way they had left them, the girls were shocked to find Cynthia’s great-grandfather’s circus train in-front of the trunk. Magically the girls are thrust back in time, to the year 1914, where they eventually find themselves forced to perform by a nasty hobo clown. Rescued from the sinister Blackie, by the beautiful, fortune teller, Gabriella, Cynthia and Gus have unwittingly become entangled in the theft of her family’s most cherished treasure. The adventure is wrought with danger as the girls must travel through time and locate the magic medallion. Should they refuse, they may never be able to return to their present-day lives.

In this second volume of the Cynthia’s Attic series, the girls meet a host of new and interesting characters and explore a wide range of settings. This is an irresistible adventure series - that has it all..entertaining, exciting and engaging,– a non-stop, thrilling ride through time. I eagerly await the third installment in this unique series!

Happy Reading!RJ xx3Rs-Real Reader Reviews

Volume 3 in this wonderful youth series will be available December 2008!! Now is the perfect time to explore Cynthia’s Attic with the young reader in your family!

As a longtime time-travel book fan I have read many books with some sort of time-travel. The first book I read that dealt with this subject was called The Thyme Garden by Edward Eager where children went into a garden and crushed thyme between their fingers and traveled elsewhere in time. I recently re-read it, and discovered the author wrote a number of other time-travel books for children. While not really "time travel", I loved the Narnia series where the children traveled to a different place. Another book I enjoyed was Andre Norton's Dragon Magic in which people were able to time travel where they wanted. Secretly, my favorite romantic movie is "Somewhere in Time" and I have even written a short story or two involving time-travel.

I purchased The Time Traveler's Wife a few months ago after hearing about it and thinking the title and cover of the book were intriguing. I suggested it as a possible read for my book group, but another book was chosen. Then an online group to which I belong suggested reading it, and I joined in. My real life book group is still not interested. Pity.

Henry first meets Clare at the Newberry Library in Chicago when Henry is 28 and Clare is 20. However Clare first meets Henry when she is 6 and he is 36. Henry has a disorder that he suspects is a bit like a seizure disorder, except instead of having a seizure, he is transported backwards and forwards in time, ending up naked where ever he lands.

In this book Henry may not change events, although he is forced to witness some tragedies time and time again, he is always helpless to change the outcome.

This book is breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly sad. However it is uplifting and I am envious of the love these two characters have for each other. The author writes it in such a way that the time-travel part of the story is believable.

I had a slightly difficult time with the ending, not the very ending, but what happened to Henry in the year before the book ended. The book was like a pleasant ride on a mild roller coaster, and suddenly it became, for a while, a jarring walk through an evil carnival fun house.

One last thing I liked about the book was the fact that many place names were real. I recently spoke to someone who said that she even went to some of the concerts mentioned in the book.

It is hard to believe that this is Audrey Niffenegger's first book. It is nearly perfect in every detail. I read an interview with the author that suggested she wrote the book in a different order than in which it was published.

"I got the title first, and played around with it for quite a long time, slowly evolving the characters in my head. I wrote the end before anything else, and then began to write scenes as they occurred to me. TTW was written in a completely different order than the one it finally took. I understood early on that it would be organized in three sections, and that the basic unit was the scene, not the chapter. It has a rather chaotic feel to it, especially at the beginning, and that is deliberate-there is a slow piecing together, a gradual accumulation of story, that mimics the experience of the characters. I made a lot of notes about the characters. I had two timelines to help me stay organized, but no outline of the plot.

(Audrey Niffenegger interviewed by Mark Flanagan. Full interview available here.)

I sincerely hope this will not be Niffenegger's last novel.