Finished!

I read until 6:30 this morning. At 4 am, Randy and I, both with our noses so deeply buried in our respective books that we were alarmed by the hour, decided me might need to get some sleep. One of the problems living above Chicken Street is that at 4 am, some of the bars are still busy, so there was no signal to us that it was later than late.
Within a few minutes of this realization, Randy finished his book, Gai Jin . He's on a Clavells kick right now. I was less than 200 pages from the end, but thought I might be able to take a break for a few hours to sleep. But then I read the line, "That was a goat, you idiot," and shortly after that, the name of the person who spoke that line. I told Randy that I knew I had just crossed over to the point of no return. I had to read straight through.
What a read, what a read. I first started reading the Harry Potter books only two years ago. I know I have mentioned it here before, but what got me on them was that I needed an antidote to the absolute funk I had been thrown into after reading Revolutionary Road right before Christams. I read them back to back to back, and it was wonderful.
Speaking of recent, great absorbing reads, about three weeks ago I could not put down I Capture the Castle. This Dodie Smith novel is one of Rowling's favorites, I've heard somewhere. Interesting coincidence I picked this up to read just before I knew that a new Harry Potter book was in my future, isn't it? A little bit more of a young adult/ adult novel, Castle is not a story of magic and wizardry, but an odd family that lives in a dilapidated castle in England in the 1930s. I found it an enjoyable read with quirky (but not annoyingly so) characters and an enchanting first-person narrative. I wish I would have read it in junior high or high school.