The Night Circus

Despite Leela's suggestion that perhaps I should sew all day today I think this will be a heavy yard work day. The area will be busy with weekend travelers and vacationers. Probably after I get my errands done this morning I will mostly stick around the house.

I finished reading "The Night Circus" this week. Similar to "Discovery of Witches" and "Shadow of Night" (where IS the third book?!) at the end of "The Night Circus" I almost read the entire thing all over again. I am positive there were things I missed.

The biggest struggle I had with "The Night Circus" is the back and forth of dates. Chapters were not necessarily in dated chronological order. I know this about myself already, but when books start chapters with the date I tend not to pay attention. In this book it at times REALLY matters what the date was and so I would be part way into one chapter and looking back at the date of the previous chapter. Again, this has to do more with how I read and I will say the more I got into the book the better I got at following the different threaded time lines.

"The Night Circus" has some simply beautiful moments with scenes that are unlike anything you will probably ever read because of the total fantasy of the circus. The ending felt rushed to me, but perhaps it was because I had too many questions or possibly because the book just had to end and everything just had to be dumped out to make it end. There were many characters that I could have probably followed just their lives and each of those characters could have been a book on its own.

Thanks to the book's epilogue (which was not dated) I did look up: nightcircus.com and almost wrote a test e-mail to bailey@nightcircus.com (which I assume probably goes to the author). The e-mail address on the proprietor's business card in this epilogue suggests that a circus dating back to the late 1800s somehow survives to present time. Book readers also know Bailey was around 12 in 1897. However time and aging and memory works differently in the circus and I hope you will read the book to experience this.