Do you guys ever get book cravings? Whenever I'm feeling sick or depressed, I get massive book cravings, with the kind of intensity and specificity I've heard about from pregnant women craving obscure foods. But the kind of books I crave really depends on my mood. When I'm feeling feverish, cold-ridden, or otherwise pathetic and self-pitying, what I crave more than juice or hot soup is romance novels for comfort and undemanding fun. When I'm feeling grouchy and snapping at everyone around me, what I want more than anything else is a snarky, funny YA novel to help me lighten up and stop taking things so seriously. When I'm feeling dreary and blinkered, like the whole world's turned grey, what I need is a really good fantasy novel to get that sense of wonder back.

Last week, in the midst of my horrendous cold, I stocked up on Sherrilyn Kenyon paranormal romances for total guilty-pleasure comfort, and they did the trick nicely. Yesterday, though, I felt grouchy, snarly, and out-of-sorts, and what I found myself craving with irrational intensity was Ellen Emerson White's The President's Daughter quartet, which I read about this summer in Liz B's "Recommendations from Under the Radar". The funny thing is, I clearly remember seeing those books on the shelves of the library when I was a kid and never bothering to pick them up, but based on Liz B's passionate recommendation, I became convinced that they were exactly what I needed to read. Alas, none of them are stocked in the libraries here or even on sale by Amazon.co.uk, but - I love online library catalogues! - I looked them up on the East Lansing Public Library's online catalogue and found out that they are still there on the shelves, exactly where I remembered them, so at least I can read all of them in January! (Unless someone cruelly & unfairly checks them out first...hmm, I may have to get my spies lined up for January...)

I compromised by re-reading Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, which was just exactly right for my mood. I'd forgotten just how much I love Meg, and how much I identified with her when I was a kid. Of course, according to Colleen Mondor, this isn't surprising - apparently everybody identified with Meg! This makes it all the weirder that on my British edition of A Wrinkle in Time, the backcover copy claims that the protagonist & hero of the story is Charles Wallace, her little brother! Now, Charles Wallace is a fantastic character, he's definitely the hero of the third book of the series, and he's an incredibly lovable side-character in A Wrinkle in Time - but it's absolutely Meg's book, and the whole thing is told from her wonderful POV. Maybe the publishers were fudging the plot to try to aim the book more at boys? All the same, it was very odd...