While Waiting for the Rapture...

Happy Rosh Hashanah! Happy Autumn!

The word rapture is a romance novel word, so I have fond feelings toward it. Here's the noun definition from Merriam-Webster:

1. an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion

2a. a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion

b. a mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things

3. often capitalized : the final assumption of Christians into heaven during the end-time according to Christian theology

You can be enraptured by something powerful, intense, beautiful, etc. It implies an element of bliss, of being transported outside yourself, outside of the ordinary. (You can see why romance writers use it.) According to the dictionary, rapture probably originated as a biblical translation of a Greek word meaning to seize, hold, or snatch up. Raptor, as in a bird of prey, is also part of this etymology. There's also rapt, as in paying close attention, which is hard to do with all our electronics distracting us. There is a Rapture scheduled for tonight, and I guess we won't bring our phones when we're transported up into heaven, but I will miss playing solitaire. Oh, what am I saying... they aren't going to take me; I'll be left behind with the rest of the non-Christians. Party!

Yesterday (Monday) I took the notary exam to renew my commission for the seventh time (and hopefully last, since in four years I will be close to retirement). The Scantron boxes seem smaller now, and I felt like Monk in there trying to mark them all perfectly and getting annoyed when my eraser left a smudge. I don’t notarize that often (and basically only for work), so I have to re-memorize the tedious facts each time. I'm tired! I’m crossing my fingers that I passed, since it would be very embarrassing to tell the peeps at work if I didn't.

I finished a book today. It was a rare one-star rating for me on Goodreads, and I feel bad about that, but fair is fair. (Usually, I will DNF a book if it's heading into one star territory, but I managed to slog through this one until the end ~ 450 pages!) The book is This Side of Dark by Caren Hahn, and it's categorized as a thriller/ suspense novel, but it isn't much of either. Not only are there multiple POVs, but there are also multiple personalities within one of the main characters! There is little motivation for why Grace feels such an intense friendship for River (the DID character) to the point that Grace will cover up a murder to protect River. The real horror however is that River is having a baby even though she loses track of time while dissociating, and one of the personalities is violent and promiscuous, while another is a young child (a fourth identity is teased at during the ending). None of this is addressed as far as being a danger to a baby. There's a budding romance involving Grace and another MC that gets derailed and dropped. There are other loose ends that the author fails to resolve, such as River's family issues, what really happened to River's husband or her mother, how the murder of the little girl Diana occurred (was there sexual abuse as implied?), etc. What a mess of a novel. Oh, and it's non-chronological too, utilizing that popular gimmick of before/after X event and flipping throughout instead of telling the story straight. 

Other people loved the book though, so what do I know? (Many of the gushing reviews are from ARC readers, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with their five stars.)