Puppy Love, as you might guess from the title and cover, is an absolutely adorable read, which is an absolutely great thing for a book to be, especially on a very lazy Saturday afternoon, when you're sick in bed with a cold.

As with L.T. Smith's See Right Through Me, Puppy Love is full of humor, love and lots of strong writing. The humor can go from sweet and vulnerable ("My heart banged dramatically inside my chest, as if it was auditioning for a new play called Hope.") to downright I-really-shouldn't-laugh-but-how-can-I-not? ("I know, I'm up and down like a prostitute's underwear about how I wanted our relationship to pan out.")

One reason I love L.T. Smith's books so much is that she creates characters who may need a little kick in the pants sometimes (the kind of people who need runway clearance and big, flashing lights before they realize someone likes them) but are nonetheless incredibly endearing and cute for being so clueless in all matters relating to love and relationships. Anyone who may find this frustrating has clearly never suffered from doubts when meeting someone she really likes and wants to have her like her back.

When Ellie and Emma, the two very likable leads in Puppy Love, first meet there is an actual spark between them. This happens along the way while they are getting to know each other and in its initial appearances, Ellie wonders if her "time with power tools made me electric."

It's stuff like this, along with genuine chemistry, down-to-earth people, a terrific dog named Charlie and Ellie's heartbreakingly and all-too-realistic abandonment by her homophobic parents that make Puppy Love such a soulful, warm and wonderful read! My only complaint, as with all truly terrific reads, is that finishing books like this make returning to your own world very hard. :)

Have a great Tuesday! I have been away from blogging for a while, but hope to be back here on a much more regular basis. It's not so much that I think what I have to say is important or even should be heard, but that I like to share new books and music I discover. And, yes, also...(sometimes) voice thoughts about a world that sometimes still confuses me...Today, I want to write about this awesome "new to me" album I discovered last week:

Someone once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. I don't think I have ever felt more like that than when wanting to do justice to Gem Club. Everything beautiful and sad on their Acid and Everything EP, everything that made it so mesmerizingly haunting, is back on Breakers, a full-length album so intoxicatingly lovely it makes a mess of your heart in the best way possible.

Its quiet restraint (the cello and piano are as much the stars as the gorgeous vocals) should not fool you. This is a very passionate album and a wonderful balm for a soul yearning for healing.

I purchased the entire MP3 album because every single track is worth its weight in gold. So if any are more outstanding than others, it's more a matter of which ones speak most to the individual listener. In my case, it's: "Breakers," "Lands," "I Heard The Party" (oh. my. gosh.), "Black Ships" and "252." Whenever someone says today's music is just awful, I silently wish I could correct them and just say they're listening in the all wrong places. Gem Club is the perfect antidote to everything that is wrong in so much of today's music scene.