reading progress

The night before last I finished Philip Pullman's The Ruby In The Smoke, which I enjoyed for what it was- a nice little Victorian YA mystery story. I guess there were a couple of plot issues that I found confusing, and characters kind of seemed to appear and disappear at random- like, "Oh, here I am, revealing a key plot point but now I have worn out my welcome in this novel so I will disappear and you will find out 50 pages later that I left and then died." 

I still liked it, and I'm going to read the next installment, and I think I'll do a proper review when I finish the series. They're quick, enjoyable, easy reads, and I would have loved them if I'd actually read them when I was a kid, but I had a weird edition and for some reason was perpetually turned off by the cover. Lesson learned!

Anyway, the Victorian setting helped paved the way for my next read, Affinity by Sarah Waters. I lovelovelove Sarah Waters. Affinity is wonderful and perfectly dark and spooky for October. I'm feeling a serious lack of Halloween spirit right now, and I don't know why. I need to watch some scary movies and read some more Poe and Lovecraft. I decorated the apartment for Halloween back in September, and I keep baking pumpkin bread and wearing cozy autumnal sweaters and doing all sorts of dorky fall things that should make me feel happy and Halloweeny, but it's not working! Affinity might be doing the trick, though. I dunno.