Dude. You Know What Sounds Good? Hometown Buffet.

I don't know what it is about swimming, but it turns us into rabid squirrels. Seriously. I'll come home and be like, "Okay, Ali, you're eating healthy right now, remember?" And next thing you know I'll have a spoonful of peanut butter in my mouth, followed by chocolate chips. (Although it's really good, it's like a huge Reese's peanut butter cup, I suggest you try it!)

So to celebrate my friends' first meet on Thursday, we're trying to plan a trip to Hometown Buffet. Because where else would you go to induce a carbohydrate coma after you swim a buttload, correct? Hopefully it works out. One of my lifelong dreams has been to go nuts at a buffet with two of my best buddies. Or at least, it is now.

Have you ever read an Irish murder mystery? I've read French, I've read British, but never Irish, until now. The Dead Hour by Denise Mina bored me for a little bit, but I ended up really liking the protagonist.


Meet Paddy Meehan, an Irish 21-year-old who is trying to support her family of five on a crappy journalism job following the police around and... reporting, obviously. She also has weight issues, which every girl can sympathize with at some point in her life, and this makes her so much more likeable (even though Kinsey Millhone, the stick who can eat 3 Big Macs and not feel a thing, is still my favorite).

In the dead of night, Paddy gets called out with the cops to investigate a noise complaint. At the door, there's a man, but a woman is also standing in the background with blood dripping down her head. The man bribes a few of the cops and Paddy (Paddy takes it unwillingly) to not write up the incident in the paper or make a big deal out of it. Next thing you know, the blond woman is dead. It turns out she was a high-profile lawyer. But why would a high profile lawyer not want help if she was being beaten to death?

And so starts Paddy on this whirlwind mystery, delving into the darker side of Ireland. No leprechauns there. And despite the fact that parts of this book get confusing or a bit slow, it's still a good book overall. Not my favorite, but whatever.

Speaking of leprechauns, the other book I read this week was about fairies. In fact, it was THE book; the one I've had on my list since it came out, an installment of one of my favorite series. It is: ARTEMIS FOWL: THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX by Eoin Colfer.

This book... didn't live up to all my expectations. But I did love being reunited with some of my favorite characters, except it always sucks when you remember which ones have died and you're like AWWW MAN, I REALLY LIKED THAT GUY, HOW'D I FORGET THAT?! Yeah. I did that a few times.

In this 7th part of the series, Artemis is now battling insanity as a paranoid, OCD mental issue catches up with him. And then there's bigger problems: someone is using Martian probes to attack spots on earth, possibly trying to get Artemis and his buddies (Holly the elf, his bodyguard Butler, and Foaly the centaur) out of the way for a bigger plot. But who?

I always loved these books because they're like Mission Impossible, Fantasy Edition. You've got these mythical creatures running around with guns and spy cameras and grappling hooks and minisubmarines, kicking butt against all the bad guys (pixies, rogue fairies, etc). It's a new concept, and it's definitely exciting to read.

It made me kind of upset, though, because I got a bad copy of the book! At page 280, my copy goes back and starts at page 249 and then back up to 280, and then picks back up at page 313. So it has the same amount of pages, technically, just about 30 of those pages ARE REPEATED, MEANING I'M MISSING 30 PAGES OF ARTEMIS FOWL ACTION!

As you can imagine, this made the ending kind of confusing to me. Argh. And I can't return it, because I bought it from a Target up north in Elk Grove over Christmas Break, and I have NO IDEA where that dang receipt went. But hey, maybe it's just my luck or something. Ali, Giver of Homes to Misfit Books.

I really wonder what went down in those 30 pages.