What I Read This Weekend

I spent yesterday reading "Too Close to Home" by Linwood Barclay from cover to cover.
There are few times in my life when I will devour a book in one sitting, mainly because I have other responsibilities that I'm supposed to, technically speaking, be looking after- and not just putting "How to Train Your Dragon" on a continuous loop and feeding them pop tarts at random intervals.
Parenting with Pop Tarts, I should patent that as a potential book series- perhaps with the sub title: How to Have Your Cake and Eat it, Too.

Anyways.
My husband came home from work at 4:00.
"You're still in your pyjamas?' he asked.
I looked. "Apparently," I said, barely looking up from book.
"And the kids, too?"
I looked at them.
"Apparently."
I couldn't tell if he was annoyed or not.
Didn't really care.
Honestly, I don't see why he would be.
It's called 'conserving laundry', and it shouldn't kill him to act happy about it.

I finished the book just before midnight.
I realized just how immersed I was in it when I made myself a glass of lemonade.
I don't usually drink lemonade, but I had suddenly a strong urge to gulp back a glass of it.
And then I realized why.
The MC in the book, Jim Cutter, drinks it or mentions it in quite a few places.
And the description of it- the beads of sweat that rolled down the glass, coupled with the scorching temperatures described in the book, made me suddenly thirsty for lemonade as well.

Anyways, here's a list of 5 things I love about the book:

1. The characters name, Jim Cutter. I didn't realize it until about half way through book how fitting the name was for someone who, as a living, mows lawns. When I caught that, I felt as the author was letting me in some private joke.

2.The opening line: "The night they killed our neighbors, the Langley's, we never heard a thing."
I was hooked immediately. For some reason, the idea of neighbors being slain in the night appeals to me.
I don't know what that says about the kind of person I am.
Probably doesn't make you want to be my neighbor, though.

3. A scene in the book where a character brings his literary agent to a funeral and flaunts her about.
He doesn't outright say in the book that the character is an egotistical ass, but that does it right there.
We get the sense that he's maybe just ever so slightly self absorbed.

4. The pace of the book.
I kept on thinking, I'll just finish this chapter, and then I'll... whatever whatever...brush my teeth, feed my kids, respond to the fire alarm.
But then the end of the chapter would bring a new twist and I'd be like "Oh screw it, I can always brush my teeth tomorrow. And I'm sure that most fires can put themselves out."
Honestly that plot was more twisted than Ozzy freaking Osbourne.
And I mean that in a good way.

5. The fact that there's a book within a book.
"A Missing Part" is a book that sounds, on the one hand, totally absurd- about a man who wakes up with no penis.
And then yet again, it sounds like it just might be the kind of phallus glorifying piece of work that critics would love. I was going to say "eat up" but I wasn't sure about how appropriate that would be used in conjunction with 'phallus'.

6. I know what you're thinking- I said 5, but I can't help but add:  The author is Canadian.