My Week With Rick Riordan

This week I decided I was sick of my own company. So I found some fictional characters to hang out with who had really exciting lives and wouldn't mind me tagging along for the ride. See, that's the thing about being a Stay-at-Home-Mom. If you have an off week, so long as you're going through the correct mothering motions, you can kind of let everything else go (for a little while). And since my child typically takes good naps and goes to bed early and is not the most demanding of playmates, and since my husband is currently rather busy at work, and since I read relatively quickly, I was able to pack 5 books into the second half of this week. I did suggest to the Hubs on Friday that I should be given a PhD in Laziness and Sloth, but, on the whole, it was quite an entertaining week.

So Wednesday I decided to finish up the series I started about a year and a half ago when Josh deployed. For those of you who don't know, the way I deal with things I don't want to deal with is by putting them on hold until I'm ready to legitimately deal with them. This hold process is crucial, and I typically accomplish it by reading (although this year with the advent of Baby who makes it difficult to get to the library or book store whenever I want, I have lowered myself to watching TV online). So, I said goodbye to the Hubs that Sunday morning, and instead of going to church (where everyone would've lovingly asked me how I was feeling) or going home (where there was a giant gap where all of his stuff should've been), I went to Borders.  And read Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The entire book. And then I put it back on the shelf and left to feed my pregnant self and face life.

So that was almost a year and a half ago, and I kind of wanted to finish up the series and find out what happens, but I didn't want to buy the series (because I'd already read the first one, so I didn't need to buy it, but then I would have an incomplete set) and they're incredibly difficult to get from the library because they're so popular right now. Better them than Twilight, I say. And then I had an epiphany. What if I could find them online for free? And so I did.

I'm not saying it was the easiest reading ever (one book would separate the "ou" from "You" like so: Y think you are so cool ou.), and another book only had about four sentences per page, so you felt like you were reading very, very quickly when in reality you were just getting tendonitis in your fingers from "turning" the page, but it was totally worth it. I'm not saying Percy Jackson is the next great classic, but I give it a five star rating for entertainment value. I also went ahead and read Riordan's latest add on to the series (which is part of different series but has a lot of the same characters), The Lost Hero, and I watched the Percy Jackson movie, which I have to say was horrible. It gave me that slight pain behind the eyes that Twilight does; it was like watching Xena Warrior Princess meets High School Musical, which is never a good thing.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the experience with you. If you're in the need for some light entertainment that includes Greek gods and goddesses, satyrs, wood nymphs, teenagers with ADHD and special powers, and sundry monsters, it's a fun series to check out. Or just find online. For cheap as free.