book reviews, chocolate review

I finished two books over the weekend. One was The Lions of al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel (sp?) Kay, and it was simply marvelous. The writing was gorgeous, the characters fascinating and well drawn, and the story compelling. In places it was very funny, and in others it rang so true. The most engaging book I've read in years. At one point, I actually had to put the book down, because I knew something was coming and I didn't want it to happen -- that's how involved I got with the universe and its inhabitants. I need to hunt down more of his books, for sure.

Then I devoured The Time Traveler's Wife -- started it on Saturday, finished it on the plane back from BMC on Monday. I'd been hearing about this book for ages, and it sat on my to-read pile for a long time (mostly because it took me so damn long to get through Quicksilver). It was an excellent book, but I should have read something else between it and the Kay because they were too similar. The plots and settings were completely different, but there was something about the atmosphere in both, watching chains of events that pull you to an inevitable conclusion.

As for the chocolate... on Sunday, after Reunion events concluding, I went to King of Prussia with J and M. It would have been a blast from the past, but the mall has been renovated so extensively that I recognized almost nothing. (The drive there from BMC was quite the nostalgia trip, though.) One of the new stores was a Lindt shop, so of course we went there. They were running a special deal -- buy two bags of truffles, get a large bar free. How could we pass that up? So M got mint truffles and I got raspberry, and we split an Intense Orange Dark Chocolate bar. Yum, yum, yum. It's filled with candied orange rather than orange ganache, which is what I was expecting, giving it a rich orange flavor and just a touch of chewiness. Simply divine. Too bad/good thing we don't have Lindt stores out here...