Starting a Novel and Working on Comps

When reading is your passion, you want to read even when your brain is so full of words it hurts. Thus, to take a break from all of the academic texts I am currently reading or re-reading while attending my final two courses of grad school and studying for my comprehensive exams, I needed something to read for that ten minutes of rest time before bed...because books. Now, while I would love to say that all I read consists of deep and high minded literature, after reading academic texts about Honduran banana farms and Charles Darwin's early years...or the early Reformation in Germany and the emergence of the culture wars in the 2oth century... I kind of want something I do not have to think about when reading. If this were Summer and I had nothing else to do, I have different authors I read, but as for now... I just want to be entertained.

I liked Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl because it was dark and the characters were borderline unlikeable to just completely unlikeable and thus to me, a bit more realistic than some of the novels I've read where complication is a quirk, but almost surface in nature. No...Flynn's characters are deeply scarred usually mentally and physically... something I have noticed as I've read her books, when people are damaged, they are outwardly so as well. I picked up her Dark Places after coming upon a trailer for the film that is coming out at some point this year. Now I have downloaded it and will, for the next few days, use it as my 10 minutes of bliss material. We shall see how this goes.
I read about a chapter while soaking in the tub tonight (something else I do to destress) and it is sufficiently dark for my tastes.

Currently, I just finished up on a chapter in one book that covered Charles Darwin's education and his father's attempts to have him follow down the path of most Darwins...into medical practice, but Charles was not a fan after just not being able to stomach surgery theaters in the 19th century in Edinburgh. To be honest, can one hold that against him? 19th century surgery could not have been anything but horrifically gruesome. The text actually mentions using sawdust in buckets around the operating table to catch the steady flow of blood that comes from the process...so yea, I may be with Charlie on this one and say NOT FOR ME.
I also spent some time with the multiple reformation movements in the German territories leading up to and through the Thirty Years War. There is a huge debate about one or multiple reformations, I remember that from another course I took...but for this particular book, the author was all about multiple and he payed special attention to the participation of different social classes in the German lands during the period and how they catered to religious reform...I remember really liking the book in 2012 when I originally read it, so going over the notes again was fun.

Finally...back to Honduran banana farms... I have another chapter to read before I can go to bed and have my ten minutes of fun reading time. 

Have a great weekend...
Oh I am on Spring Break, but I have a paper due so oh well LOL.