For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad

"For the great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry,

And all their songs are sad."

- G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

Wait a minute, Irish authors? I thought I was an English authors girl. Despite my Irish heritage, I'd never even thought twice about there being authors living in Ireland nowadays, and now I'm apparently gulping down their books at the rate of three a month.

I finished Tana French's In the Woods yesterday, and it was one of those books where I actually had to calm myself down and swear not to post about it until tomorrow, for fear of sounding like one of those chicks on Tumblr after seeing The Avengers ("dfslkjsdfjladfslhdsahjkldsf SO MANY FEELS"). I never would have read it if it hadn't been for this book club thing, the premise not being the type of thing I go for and the title being just about the least impressive thing about it. Now I want to gad around recommending it to people, but I probably can't because it's full of disturbing content. But it's Ray Bradbury meets BBC crime drama, and it couldn't have come at a better time in my life, when I was feeling down because my beloved August was starting to masquerade as Autumn and all I needed, though I didn't know it, was a cathartic summer-fall transition read.

I also had to promise myself I wouldn't plunge right into its sequel, The Likeness, until I had had some time to breathe.

Instead, Bernadette requested that I read her Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, which all the kids in her theater group have read. So far, it's not really my thing. There's a manic energy to it that I think would make for a great graphic novel, but the author is so absorbed in his world that he can't stop telling instead of showing. There are also steampunky versions of the Fair Folk that are low on ambiance and high on possibility as Lego sets.

(It's got its moments, though, not least of which is the revelation that the protagonist's dad and his manservant's uncle perished years ago aboard a ship full of exploding cola. That's a backstory.)

Gotta get off now. She's bugging me to read her Chapter Four, so I daresay the author's doing something right.