High-brow, low-brow, almost all books are worth a look

I am often labeled as a book snob.

For the most part, I like books that are difficult to read. James Joyce's "Ulysses" grew on me after the second reading. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen is one of my favorite love stories. Neruda's "Captain's Verses" moves me nearly to tears with each new crack I put in the spine.

However, I'm not all about classic literature, or even foreign language poetry. I like them both well enough, but I like to temper those bouts of serious reading with novels that are more light-hearted and less, well, old.

Most recently, I've been cracking into Irish short stories and Norse mythology. I know, not John Grisham, but not "Ulysses" either.

And this weekend, between story assignments, I picked up the final novel in a series of young adult novels that I have appreciated from the first page of the first story.

I stumbled upon "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" thanks to the film, which I enjoyed enough to watch twice in one weekend (a rarity for me).

Being a regular user of Google, thanks to my job, I did a search to see where the story originated from and found Rick Riordan, author of the series.

For those who don't know the story, Percy Jackson is a demigod in modern New York who embarks on life-threatening adventures to save the world.

After seeing the film, "Lightning Thief," and discovering the series of novels, I headed to Hastings and bought the first four novels in the series of five. Then, sat down and read them all in less than a week.

This weekend, I began to read the fifth, and final, novel and have plowed almost halfway through it in about a day.

These stories are hardly Chaucer, but they are interesting in the way the Harry Potter series is interesting. There are believable and detailed characters with flaws and irregularities. There is world that is easy to imagine because it is set in famous cities around the United States. There are lessons about life, friendship and family that make sense without bashing you in the face.

All in all, it is a series that I have enjoyed start to almost finish. No snobbery needed.

Pam Robel is the paginator for the Columbia Basin Herald. We have heard rumors that she was once caught reading "Archie and Jughead" comics.