Switching to a different domain

I am switching this blog, same content, etc to the following domain, effective immediately ~

http://librarianinheels.wordpress.com

See ya there!

Watermelon

I just love Marian Keyes.  She has a great writing style, and she’s funny.  Last year for Book Club we read Anybody Out There, which was about Anna Walsh – and we discovered that Marian has written books about all the Walsh sisters (except Helen, we’re all hoping she does that sometime soon).  We chose Watermelon not only because it was the first book about the Walsh sisters (and Marian’s first, also, I think), but also because one of our members loved it.

I really enjoyed it – it was a fast read…I took it on vacation with me and zipped right though it.  It surprises me that there’s no reading guide associated with it, because it brings up a lot of relevant questions.  We argued a little bit at our discussion about the nature of this woman’s problems.  Her husband, you see, leaves her immediately after the birth of their first child, and madness ensues.  Alot of us couldn’t get past that.  She completely crumbles (realistic enough) and bounces back, even meets a new guy and has a chance at love…until her ex comes back into the picture.  For me, the circumstances surrounding his return were far-fetched, and if my husband had come back to me the way this woman’s did her – I would’ve kicked him out of my life.  I wouldn’t have allowed him to come back.  But the character, who’s supposed to be independent and strong, from an equally strong Irish family, backs down and questions the very essence of herself, which I (and other readers in our group) found uncharacteristic for her, given her previous descriptions.  Overall, though, I liked the book.  And it sparked great discussion for our group. 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Well, Happy Mother’s Day! I drew the short straw this year, and Sunday is my day to work.  However, it’s supposed to be rainy and cold, and Monday’s supposed to be nice, and I get Monday off.  Plus, as I reminded my sister, if I didn’t have to work on Mother’s Day, let’s face it – it’d be like any other day.  Kind of like the beginning of “Sixteen Candles“.

This isn’t a book review – it’s a movie review…I finally finished watching 27 Dresses yesterday, and I really liked it!  It was very cute, and Katherine Hiegl’s character wears great clothes and has a great NYC apartment.  It made me wonder what the hell I did with all those awful bridesmaids dresses I wore back in the day – and, seriously…I have some really, really awful ones…from the late 80s and early 90s.  I wish I could find them, because I don’t think even my 5 year old daughter would want them to play dress up in – they’re horrible.  And why bother to say “Oh, and the best thing is, you can wear it again…”?  C’mon people…it’ll be relegated to the back of the closet or maybe, just maybe, your three year-old will use it to play in.   My mother had a quilted gold-lame sheath dress and matching quilted long coat that I used to play in c. 1972.  I think it was one of those things my Dad laughed at.  Anyway.

So, this movie is about this woman who has been a bridesmaid 27 times, is secretly in love with her boss – (played by Edward Burns, who frankly makes me want to gag no matter what he’s in, but OK…) someone who finds it so fundamentally impossible to say “no” to people that she finds herself planning the wedding of her sister to this guy…the man she thinks she’s in love with.  Throw in the ever-tasty James Marsden as the disheveled, quirky committments writer and madcap wackiness ensues.  I really did enjoy it – it was a lot of fun, and definitely a “chick flick”, which is why I’m posting a little blurb about it here…maybe you’ll get a chance to kick up your feet and watch a chick flick on mom’s day!

Summer books

We decided go back to our “roots” for the books for the summer club ~ returning to some more classics in the fall. We read Marian Keyes, Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner last summer, so we’ve chosen some different titles for this summer:

Watermelon by Marian Keyes

Something Borrowed and Something Blue by Emily Giffin

Animal Husbandry by Laura Zigman

Certain Girls and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner

I love Laura Zigman’s writing and I think the group will, too!!

We’re updating our site at the library, but for information, go to www.evpl.org

Jane Austen and Marie Antoinette?

I’ve been paying alot of attention to Jane Austen this winter and spring – what with the PBS “Complete Jane Austen”, which I loved – and the chick-lit book discussion, it seems like 2008 has been the year of Austen – at least for me. Our other book club just finished reading “Abundance: a novel of Marie Antoinette“, which my mother loved, and my boss loved…I have a pre-pub galley that I was given at a meeting last year, but I never got around to reading it. I’m liking it a lot and looking forward to next week, when I can devote more time to it. Spring, with all the flowers popping and the birds singing – all the color and flair – seems a wonderful time to be reading about such opulence.

Not that I am necessarily comparing Austen with Naslund, the author of Abundance – but now that I am reading about Marie Antoinette, it’s only just occurred to me that she and Jane Austen were contemporaries – living during the same time period (late in Marie’s life, early in Jane’s) – and the stark contrasts in societies living a narrow channel apart is one that I, for some reason, had never before considered. The absolute and almost wanton decadence of the French monarchy during the late 18th century is just so fascinating to me. When you compare it to the highly ordered worlds crafted by/reflected in the work of Austen, some of which take place in roughly the same time period (maybe a little later, but not much) – well, it’s just amazing. I don’t know. I was just thinking about that.

The most recent selection we’ve read was The Jane Austen Book Club, which I liked, but which no one else in my group did. I have to admit, had I not seen the movie first, I probably would have enjoyed the book more. That being said, I like stories with a diversity of characters. Some of the characters in the book I liked, some I didn’t. I had a hard time measuring them to their supposed corresponding Austen characters. I think it was a miss.

What would Jane Austen have thought of Marie Antoinette? What did she think of her? Weird question, I know. I think I have been reading too many indexing texts and contracts for downloadable audiobooks.

Next up is The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, and then we’re running headlong into summer.

Pemberley, or, Pride and Prejudice continued

Um, I didn’t like this book.  The entire plot of Pemberley, or Pride and Prejudice Continued is, to quote my grandmother, “hornswoggle”.

I didn’t have violent objections to it, but I didn’t like it – mainly because while I was reading it, I wondered if the woman who wrote it even read Pride and Prejudice – I mean, none of the complex characters from P&P were well-represented here.   There were holes in the plot about a mile wide – for example, Lydia supposedly has four – count ‘em – FOUR – children with Wickham by the time Elizabeth and Darcy have been married a year.  Well, unless they (E & D) waited four years to get married, which, upon re-reading the end of P&P, I am relatively sure they did not, that is like almost physically impossible, unless they had two sets of twins back to back (riiiiiight – because that happens all the time.)  There is also the question of Jane and Bingley and their daughter Emily, who is apparently old enough to be toddling around – making her at least a year old.  Jane is pregnant with, and ready to give birth to, her second child.  It was my impression at the end of P&P that Jane and Bingley and Elizabeth and Darcy all got married around the same time.   How could Jane have a toddler and be ready to give birth again already?  This woman was seriously off her rocker in trying to construct any semblance of a realistic timeline.

I could go on and on about the characterization of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, which is pathetic and laughable at best.  In this book, Elizabeth is reduced to behaving like the kind of one-dimensional, simpering moron she despises in P&P.  All she does in this book is construct overly dramatic scenarios involving her husband, and whine to herself about her inability to produce a child.  And why is she so worried about running Pemberley?  Isn’t that what servants are for?

Darcy really doensn’t figure into the story much – enough to make it clear to the reader that he and Elizabeth regularly engage in sex (gasp!) – and then he’s off, again, on some goose-chase that Elizabeth has to learn about from her mother or Caroline Bingley or the Steward’s son, Mr. Gresham.  There’s even a hint that Mr. Gresham is “into” Elizabeth thrown in there – for what reason, I couldn’t really tell.  Oh, wait – Elizabeth LEAVES Darcy.  That’s right, she LEAVES him.  Anyone who knows anything about history knows that this wouldn’t have been a possibility. 

The way the story just ends is ridiculous – Elizabeth, after worrying endlessly (see about reference to constructing dramatic scenarios involving one’s husband) about “the Frenchwoman” and the child that she sees Darcy with in town, we learn on the next to the last page that she (the aforementioned Frenchwoman) was Bingley’s mistress, and that the child is his, and that her sister Jane, who apparently is on her deathbed at the very moment Elizabeth learns this,  is “OK” with it.  But WAIT – suddenly, miraculously, Jane is healed, Elizabeth is pregnant (huh?), and all is well once again in the house of Darcy.  Excuse me while I barf.

On the back of the book, it mentions that the author, Emma Tennant, is the eighth cousin twice removed of Jane Austen’s housekeeper’s granddaughter’s dog groomer, or her own grandpa, or something like that.  I guess that means she “knew” enough about the plot of Pride and Prejudice to not have to, oh, you know, read it – or re-read it, if you want to give her the benefit of the doubt –  or research it, or anything.  In any case, this was not a good book.

Pride and Prejudice

Ok, I hadn’t read this book in almost (gulp) 20 years.  I was an English minor in college, and I always remember just detesting this book (and most English literature, but I don’t know why…) the first time I read it – so much that I avoided all Jane Austen books until now.  Of course, I have seen all the movies – but I guess that doesn’t count.

Upon re-reading this, I’ve discovered that I love it.  Winter is the time for me to retreat into great literature.  I love sitting in a warm room (ideally with a fireplace, but I don’t have one – so I sit on the couch all covered up), reading a book I love.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I love Pride and Prejudice.  Ah, the foibles of youth.

I am not going to re-hash the plot, because everyone knows it anyway – even those who have never read the book.  But who hasn’t had a Mr. Wickham in their life? …and I like to think that most of us, on some level, have found our Mr. Darcy.   What is amazing to me, as is to most people, I think, is how much foresight Austen had - how much basic knowledge of the human psyche she possessed.  P&P is not just a love story – it’s a story about human interaction, the human condition – complete with all of the character types we can find today, in 2008.  Mr. Collins, in particular, is a character who reminds me so much of the people I used to encounter when I worked in New Harmony.   And Lady Catherine – and Mrs. Bennet – I mean, there is literally every character study in humanity in this book…and exactly the same kinds of characters today!!!

I love that what we are doing right now at the library, with our “Chick Lit Meets Jane Austen” group, coincides with the Complete Jane Austen on PBS.  I have been really enjoying my Sunday nights watching the original Desperate Housewives – or, rather – the Desperate to be Housewives.  I love the idea of that world – where things seemed (but were obviously not) so much simpler than they are today.

So I am now reading Persuasion, and – of course, I have seen both movies (1995 and 2008) – and I love the story – but I have never read the book.  I’ll be reporting on it soon, I love it so far – what is not to like?  It’s icy outside (as we speak), cold, windy, blustery, and my assignment for my next book discussion is to read Persuasion.   I can’t believe I get paid to read! 

I am astonished that I didn’t like this stuff when I was in my late teens and early twenties.  At least I can tell myself that the fact that I do now means I have changed for the better!

Bitter is the New Black

Oh, how I wish I had had this book, say, 3 years ago, when I was mulling over whether or not to quit my job.  I decided to quit, and thank God, I landed another job - but this book would really have made me feel good.  I mean, what this woman went thought – I don’t know.  I certainly wouldn’t have been able to “maintain” myself on the level she did.  Of course, when I get mad, I cry. 

I think what I enjoyed the most about this book was that the author is basically a peer.  I mean, she was born a year before I was (you’ll have google her to figure out how old I am, I guess – either that, or I will tell you), and alot of her cultural references were the same as mine.  Someone in our reading group figured out that she went to Purdue (a craftily buried reference to Harry’s apparently gave it away – and I say craftily, because I didn’t catch it), and she was a Pi Phi (so was I) – so I feel like, along with her bad experiences, her connections to Indiana, and her sorority affiliation, Jen Lancaster and I are kind of – oh, I don’t know – kindred spirits.  Maybe a little.  I mean, I do love my Target, and I always have, and Crate and Barrel has never been a problem for me, or a step down.  But I do have a suede jacket from Neiman Marcus, c. 1984.  Does that count?

The thing I liked about this book was that she though ALOT of the same things I think about – the negative things, and my husband tends to think of me as a negative person – so it’s nice to see that someone else, well, thinks the same way I do.  It’s refreshing.  There’s not much to pick apart in this book, other than she went through some amazingly crappy stuff, was backstabbed and used, and still she managed to come out on top.  I love the letter she wrote to her former employer, appearing at the end of the book.  I’ve read other reviews of her book on the internet, and alot of other people don’t seem to like this.  I do wonder how much of it is contrived – but I also think that it’s a “fun” read, which to me is part of the point of “chick lit”.  It doesn’t have to be brain surgery, and it doesn’t have to be a bodice-ripper.  It’s entertainment – pure and simple. 

Spring 2008 Chick Lit Book Discussion Titles

Here are the titles and dates for my Spring Chick Lit Book Discussion group.  We’re doing Jane Austen – kind of a contemporary mixed with classics focus:

 January 23

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
(Fielding has said she modeled the basic plot structure of Bridget Jones after Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)

February 20

Pemberley, or Pride and Prejudice Continued by Emma Tennant

March 19

Persuasion by Jane Austen and Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
Fielding modeled this sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary after Austen’s Persuasion.

April 23

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

May 21

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

I’m sitting here, trying to think of something to write about this book, and I can’t even remember the title.  All I can think of is The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Not that it’s a bad book – on the contrary – I liked it.  And it bears no resemblance to the aforementioned work about traveling pants…I think it just has an equally long title.  Anway, it just wasn’t memorable.  There wasn’t much to it. 

Where was the character development in this story?  And who were these angry housewives?  I mean, yeah – occasionally they got angry, at their husbands.  Big deal.  They got angry about social phenomena.  Big deal.  They got angry that their friend had cancer.  But did they do anything?  Not really.

I was surprised to find that nearing the end of this book, I had basically no more knowledge about the characters, with the exception of Faith, than I did at the beginning of the book.  This made me wonder why the author chose the multiple narrator style.  I didn’t know anything about any of these people, and frankly, by about page 200, I had finally accepted that I didn’t care.  Where were the juicy details about these womens’ marital dissolutions?  Where were the down and dirty bits about the depression and  frustration of being stay-at-home mothers?  Where was the love comingled with resentment towards their spouses?  Why did not one of the books they read have any relevance whatsoever to what was going on in the story?  And why (spoiler alert) was SLIP the one who got sick?  Why wasn’t it Faith?  Why were we supposed to care about Slip?  We basically knew nothing about the woman.

Oh, and references to pop culture?  Not a one.  No tie-dyes, or disco-balls, or extremely large shoulder pads.  Not a one.  I think pot was mentioned in the 60s.  Vietnam was mentioned.  WOW.  Big shocker there. 

I think as a semi-mindless “beach read” this is acceptable, but still – it left me with too many questions.  I wouldn’t say it was bad, necessarily, but I wouldn’t say it was good either.  It just sort of was.