Women

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard St

I really liked The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard St, the book and the character. TW liked the book but not the character. I guess that makes sense. Lillian could be a little unlikeable. Maybe. I just saw her as a flawed human being — flawed in so many ways because of her childhood. I loved the businesswoman Lil — she was awesome. No she wasn’t a nice boss, or a nice woman — so what, sue her (lol), she wasn’t any worse than her male counterparts was she?

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The Daring Ladies of Lowell

I hadn’t planned on reading The Daring Ladies of Lowell — too much on my TBR list and not nearly enough time. But, I kept seeing it mentioned on blogs and on reading lists and it’s in high demand at our library so I figured what the heck — if everyone wants to read it, maybe I should make time.

And, since my attention span is crap right now and I can’t seem to get much of anything except work (and housework) done, this seemed look a good read. Something light and easy but not middle grade fiction.

It was pretty darn good. Surprisngly so. I liked Lovey and I liked Alice. I even liked most of the Fiskes.

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Dollface

Dollface wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. Chicago during prohibition. Mob madness, etc. etc. I didn’t like Vera enough to really love this book. I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t. I liked her best when she was bootlegging but the rest of the time, I just kind of found her annoying.

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The Supreme Macaroni Company

Since I’ve read all of the other Valentine books, I figured I should go ahead and read The Supreme Macaroni Company, too. I hate leaving series unfinished (and since one of my goals is to catch up/keep up with series, it seemed extra important to go ahead and read it.)

It was fine. Not my favorite Valentine book but not my least favorite, either. I used to love Valentine and her weird family but now I just love her weird family and she gets on my nerves. Also, the ending was predictable. At least I predicted it a lot earlier than it came about. Both what happened to Giancarlo and what happened to the house.

I didn’t predict either would happen exactly as they happened but it was obvious. Giancarlo did THAT with the house (duh) without telling Valentine (duh) and then… yea. Predictable.

Also very typical of Trigiani, so if you like her books — you’ll like this one.

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The Signature of All Things

We finished an audio book right before Easter and none from my reserve list were available at the library so I grabbed the first thing that looked somewhat interesting, via my library’s online system and that just happened to be Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things.

Amusing because I’d just sat through the video she made of her house in Jersey, the one that she’s trying to sell, and complained mightily about her and her video. (It made me queasy and she was kind of weird in it, IMO.)

I’ve also never read Eat, Pray, Love… so there you go.

It took forever to listen to this book, even though we made two trips to Wisconsin while listening to it. It took so long, the darn license expired on me and I had to re-check it out. Frustrating but that should tell you that we found it interesting enough to go through the pain of doing that, while sitting in the parking lot of our library (even though by then I had another audio book in the car just waiting for us to listen to it.)

It was interesting. Alma was interesting. (So was her father.) So were all of the characters, really. The sex scenes were… a little strong in places, (moss will forever remind me of binding closets and oral sex… just saying…) – I think particularly so because we were listening to it rather than reading it. You can’t skim really descriptive passages very easily in audio, even if they make you cringe… So. Consider that before you read this book.

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The Valley of Amazement

Was not amazing.

Or it was amazing that it took me more than a week to read it?

The Valley of Amazement wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t amazing and it was not a quick read. I wasn’t a fan of the way it was laid out. I didn’t like the jump back to see what had been happening with Lulu Mimi while her daughter was growing up a courtesan. That felt jarring and it was too short. The jump back was equally jarring and short. I prefer we learn about all of the characters in the proper sequence without the jumping forward and backward and forward again.

Also, all the horrible things happened and happened and happened and happened.

I also didn’t love any of the main characters — I liked their sidekicks better. Magic Gourd, Golden Dove. Those were great women. There should be a book about them.

But, it was Amy Tan so it was well written and interesting.

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