I finished this one last week, pretty quickly. It was good but not great - which is not so surprising, considering it was written for pre-teens. I was crazy about Lois Duncan's books when I was that age and was curious to see how I would feel about my childhood favorites now (I picked up Madeline L'Engel's A Ring of Endless Light and put it down just as quickly; I have high hopes for the Sweet Valley High series, the books that taught me about boyfriends and sex and bad girls, that I plan to pick up next).
Anyway, the most interesting thing was realizing how much my life had changed. Killing Mr. Griffin is set in Albuquerque, a city that was as foreign to me as Algiers when I was a kid (although perhaps just as dusty). I had no conception of it, I'm sure. And as an adult, I've lived in Santa Fe, just an hour north. It was just so strange to read the book and be able to picture the Sandias, knowing that as a kid I had no idea that one day I would be able to do that. No doubt this is more than Lois Duncan ever intended for her book, but it was an interesting trip down memory lane nonetheless. Moving on...
Next up: Raymond Khoury's The Sanctuary. I'm somewhere around page 50 right now. It's not great -- the language is a little overwrought -- but maybe it will go quickly and perhaps even improve.
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