Sunday Salon: Vampires and exercise bikes

I've had an unusually good reading week. In fact, in addition to the review I just posted at book-blog.com of Jennifer Anne Kogler's The Otherworldies (see below), I have another review in the works for Matt Richtel's Hooked. The trick to reading a lot, apparently, is ignoring one's other reading obligations--news magazines and the like. Also, it's a mood thing.

Anyway, after finishing Hooked last night, I started reading Judith Guest's The Tarnished Eye this morning. And I'm happy to report that I'm already on page 83. For the third day running, I've managed to ride the exercise bike for 60 minutes straight. Yes, yes, it's at the lowest resistance setting, and I'm not speeding, I suppose, at 50-55 RPM. Still, it's an hour. And during that hour I read Guest's book, so that's twice the goodness squeezed out of the same 60 minutes.

Jennifer Anne Kogler, The Otherworldies

Eos © 2008, 400 pages

Twelve-year-old Fern McAllister is weird enough that she's the regular target of bullies at her over-strict private school, St. Gregory's. Unlike her twin brother and faithful confidante Sam, Fern is pale-eyed and unusually sensitive to sunlight: her skin can blister after just a few minutes of exposure. And it doesn't help that she talks to her dog and climbs trees to escape the other students during recess. As it turns out, Fern is stranger than even her tormenters' can have imagined. Early in Jennifer Anne Kogler's The Otherworldies, Fern finds herself teleporting involuntarily out of a boring English class to a beach miles away. It's the first bizarre event in a long series of them, and the start of Fern's education into her true nature. Fern is, as the book's title suggests, an "Otherworldy"--or, as the less politically correct among us would have it, a vampire.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Comments

[Clare D]

1.

Dr Grump wants me to tell you she is very impressed with this, and thinks doing two things at once is the way ahead - which is, of course, why she combines her career in etymology with sexual dynamics.

[Joanne]

2.

I really should get my own exercise bike, you can always spot me at the gym - I'm the one who forgets to bring (a)my water bottle (b)towel (c)sneakers - however I always have my current reading material :)

[Debra Hamel]

3.

Clare, I can't tell you how much I admire Dr. Grump, in part for that great pair of careers. Her approval means a great deal to me.

I could never be a gym person. Too...public. I do like my exercise bike. It's a recumbent one, which I did on purpose to facilitate reading and minimize or eliminate, if you will, coccyx-related unpleasantness.

Interestingly, I'm fine going for an hour at this low rate. I feel like I could go on forever. Except: it's hard to bend my back afterwards and also hard to climb the stairs for a bit. Plus, my ankles seem to be sore, which is weird.