Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Ahhhh!  School's out.  The weather is sunny, hot, and humid.  It's finally time to relax on the beach with a good book in one hand and a cold drink in the other while listening to the waves lap up against the shore; right?  WRONG!  I love summer, but this one has started off crazy.  Thankfully, however, the crazy is due to great circumstances rather than bad ones.

I finally got a permanent teaching placement!!  Woo-hoo!!  It's my dream job at my dream school working with colleagues and a principal whom I adore.  So as much as I thought it would break me (and sometimes it did), maybe schlepping through various school systems working as a pee-on for a couple years trying to get my foot in the door somewhere was worth it.  With the new job, of course, comes bigger responsibilities.  So I've been spending a lot of my time these two weeks filling out paperwork, ordering supplies for my new room, attending meetings, teaching summer school, and reading a ton of professional materials. Naturally, this has all left me with little time to read my own personal picks.  And I'm beginning to miss my reading routine.

My own personal picks these days have not been going smoothly, though.  I can't seem to find a book that holds my interest long enough.  Yes, I have a lot of excitement, stress, and adrenaline pumping through my body right now which does make it more difficult to focus.  But I'm also finding myself overly eager to discover that next great book that traps me between its pages and doesn't let me out until I've absorbed every last detail of its intrigue.  I've had to flip through three or four books before finally settling upon one.  And they all fall flat.

Because I loved Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book so much, I tried to read Year of Wonders.  It's the story of the plague that takes place in England during the late 1600s and follows the life of a village that is quarantined from the rest of the world until the plague has eventually run its course.  Some of the story is even based on actual people and events.  I love these types of books.  So I was ready to tear through this one.  But I found no suspense nor fascinating information about the time period or events to pull me into a sense of sympathy for this village and its people.  What I did find was its predictability and lackluster storytelling.  Unfortunately, it was an underwhelming read.  I think Geraldine Brooks is an amazing author and her attention to detail and research are evident in her writing.  I just did not care for this one, but it won't deter me from reading her others.