Say You’re One of Them
I did read Oprah’s book selection, Say You’re One of Them. I’m at BlogHer talking about it – and I may or may not be cursing both Oprah and my mother for forcing me to read this.
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Books in Bed
Day After Night
Once again, it’s no Red Tent but it’s a darn good book. I liked Day After Night a lot. I loved the characters. I loved the “escape”. I didn’t hate the ending.
The Help
During the summer, we were at the library checking out and another librarian and another patron were discussing a book that had just arrived on reserve for her. The librarian said it was the “hottest” book of the summer in the library. TW and I strained across the desk to see what it was, The Help. huh. We hadn’t heard of it.
I went home, put it on my reserve list and forgot about it.
It arrived last week and my goodness, it’s not in very good shape for such a new book. It’s made the rounds and it’s binding is in serious trouble (and it’s not TW’s fault for taking it in the bathtub either.)
Anyway, about the book. I see why it’s a hot commodity here in the Chicagoland suburbs. It’s nicely written. It’s about the relationship between white women in Mississippi and their maids. I loved the characters, all of them. Even the horrible white women who are very hard to love.
Great book that I did not want to end. I want to know what happens to Skeeter. To Minny. To poor Celia. To evil Hilly. To those little white children of Elizabeth’s, who God help them are going to be in some big trouble unless they get some help.
Nation
I’m not a Terry Pratchett fanatic. I like him well enough but not that much. I’ve probably only read three of his books, well four now that I’ve read Nation.
It started slow but once I settled down with it, I liked it very much. I’m even a little sad that it doesn’t sound like there’s a sequel. Too bad, I’d have liked Daphne and Mau to have continued.
Crank
Alrighty, I’ve done my supporting banned and challenged books thing for the season. Two Ellen Hopkins books down and I swear I’m not going to read another one. Really. I’m not. I can’t. I just can’t do it.
I was enjoying Crank well enough. Reading Identical last week got me nice and prepped for the prose and RJ ranting about the stupidity and unrealistic lifestyle choices of “Bree” had me ready to tackle this “fantasy”.
Hah. It wasn’t as unrealistic as RJ would like to think but it was stupid – at least that part where the crank addicted 17 year old decided to carry her pregnancy to term and Kristina’s mother was glad she “honored her baby” and didn’t abort. Oh freaking brother.
Nope, can’t read any more Hopkins. That sealed it for me.
Baking Cakes in Kigali
TW said Baking Cakes in Kigali was kind of Ladies #1 Detective Agency-like. I guess she’s right, though I didn’t find Angel nearly as compelling as I do Precious. And of course, there isn’t really any detectiving going on in Baking Cakes.
But yes, the morals and lessons – those remind me of Mma. Ramotswe.
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South of Broad
I can’t help but like Pat Conroy, I just can’t. Even when I roll my eyes at his long foofy sentences and all of the D-R-A-M-A. I just can’t help it. It’s the Charlestonian in me. Sue me.
South of Broad gets more right about Charleston than most books set in my home town. On the rare occasion that Conroy gets something wrong, I can forgive him.
I even forgive him for throwing in Hugo for very little good reason that I could come up with. If you wanted to do away with someone, there were better ways. If you wanted to hook Leo and Molly up again, there were also better ways. But then again, that’s what Charleston is like – all roads lead to Hugo. OK OK fine, I forgive you Conroy. Just don’t write another book that includes Hugo, please.
Oh, one more thing… shorter epilogues, please.
Everything Nice
We ended up with two copies of Everything Nice checked out from the library. I picked it up a few weeks ago, TW picked it up last week. It wasn’t good enough to have two copies. It wasn’t bad either.
Chick lit with a chick who was not very chick like – and she also wasn’t a lesbian. Weird. Butch women are usually lesbians in fiction, not this time.
Identical
In honor of Banned Book Week, I put a couple of Ellen Hopkins books on my library reserve list. I couldn’t believe I’d never read one of her books before… they all seemed so familiar.
Turns out there’s a reason why her books were familiar, Crank is the book RJ ranted about reading for the first couple of weeks of school. It was too depressing and it wasn’t realistic… yes, she said that. It wasn’t realistic to her because she wouldn’t be the girl in Crank. Whatever…
Identical was interesting once I got used to the prose style writing. And oddly enough, it took me a good long while to figure out the underlying issue with Kayleigh and Raeanne…
RJ would say this is depressing, and oh boy is it… but I think she’d have probably liked it better than Crank.
The Shortest Distance Between Two Women
I think The Shortest Distance Between Two Women is the first Kris Radish book that I didn’t really enjoy.
I liked the Guilford women. I liked the small SC town the story was set in. I even sort of liked the idea behind the book. But it was long and rambling and not in a good way.
It was feel good chick lit that really never felt good.
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