Lunch Time Page Turner

Now that the weather has turned too cold to comfortably enjoy lunch outdoors, I have had to retreat to the staff break room. I worried that I was not going to get to read at all today as several chatty people would not leave me alone. But the book gods smiled upon me for a change and somehow as I neared the Pit of Despair, everyone suddenly left the room and for nearly 45 minutes I was the only one there. I read The Looking Glass Wars. The chapters are short and does it ever read fast. I must say Beddor is great at keeping up the tension. Princess Alyss is stuck in Oxford as Alice Liddell and in danger of forgetting who she is. Meanwhile, Hatter is madly searching the world trying to find her so he can give her the training she needs to get her back to Wonderland depose the usurping Queen Redd who is ruining the country. And in Wonderland the Alyssians are doing their best to fight the good rebel fight. The story keeps switching between the different threads, often jumping to a different one at a critical moment in the current one. As my lunch break neared the end, I kept glancing up at the clock to see if I had time to read just a little more. Even as the clock said I had to go I kept reading because I couldn't stop. I had to finish the chapter. I had to know how something was going to turn out. Moments like that are pure reading bliss. I had a difficult time pulling my nose out of the book and getting back to work. I didn't realize until today that the book was such a page-turner. I'm almost half-way through it already. But given how hard it was to get back to work after lunch, I wonder if I should take something with a slower pace for tomorrow, make it easier to close the book when it's time? Nah.