Damn Lauren Willig – she’s in the suburbs this evening and I can’t be there. So not fair, since I just finished The Garden Intrigue and she made me forget to be grouchy about the name of the book, made me like bad poets and bad poetry more than I should, and be grouchy that we have to wait for the next book. Thankfully, it’s a Miss Gwen book – that will be worth waiting for, since we have to wait. Almost as good as a Turnip book.
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Oops, almost forget to post this… I finished Bad Luck Cadet and wrote about it over here: Bad Luck Cadet. I can’t wait for Bad Luck Detective!
I received a free review copy of Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot AGES ago. So long ago that I can’t even remember how long ago it was. And we’ve been listening to it for months. A month ago I jokingly said we may NEVER finish listening to it and then yesterday TW said “this is the last disc” and I almost drove the car off of the road because I was so surprised. The last disc? Really? Yippeee!
So why did it take so long to finish this one? No idea. I thought it was just because it’s a really long book but now that I’ve looked at the listing on Amazon and see that it was only 416 page – I’m surprised, I thought it would be easily 600 pages and wouldn’t have blinked at 750. But just over 400? Ugh.
I liked the narrator’s voice and I found Madeleine and Mitchell’s stories interesting. I found myself chuckling quite often and rolling my eyes from time to time, as well. I really like nothing better than a Eugenides book for his super smart, thinky sentences – pretension included. But, and this is the but that made it take months to finish, I found myself easily distracted and disconnected from the characters. One minute I was super interested in what was happening and the next I had checked out – then I’d turn off the cd and it would be weeks before I’d turn it on again.
Too much of the story revolved around the guys and what they were doing (or not doing) with Madeleine. Her own story line was all about her life as it pertained to the guys. Had she ditched Leonard (and Mitchell) after the conference where she finally decided what she wanted to do next, and gone off and done it – or gone home and really worked to make it happen, that would have been something. But no – she went home, and the story dropped her right back where she was – with no depth, no ego of her own, just a young woman in the 70s still floating along where the guys allow her to float
Still… I’d like to know what happens next to all three characters. I would hope their lives move along without each other and they never see each other again.
This book is a BlogHer Bookclub book but I did not officially read it for the BHBC. Just a bit of a coincidence, really.
I can’t decide if I want to rant about The Underside of Joy or rave about The Underside of Joy. Even the ranting is rally a kind of raving – because I wouldn’t be ranting about the book itself or about the author’s writing or anything else. I want to rant about these characters – particularly about men like Joe. And while ranting, I’ll of course be nice enough to point out that Joe (and men like him) are in part, products of their parents and their childhood who in turn are products of their own childhood etc.
It’s a vicious cycle. That rant would turn into men, like Joe, who are even worse than Joe and I don’t even want to go there, do I?
Nope, I don’t.
So let me just say – great book, quick read, not quite the tearjerker I expected but emotional just the same. And – it ended well.
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The Secret Life of Dresses was a wee bit sadder than I expected it to be. I really wanted a slightly different ending because… sad! I loved the dresses and Mimi, I just wish I’d gotten to know her better – ya know?
I do love how the stories of the dresses came to be – that was fabulous. And I am dying to just surf A Dress A Day for awhile – but I have work to do. Maybe this weekend. J
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How did Mozart really die? Was he poisoned? And by whom? And why? Mozart’s Last Aria is about Mozart’s sister and her efforts to find the answers to those questions – and in the process, we see Mozart as a bit of a radical feminist, which was kind of nifty. Fun little whodunit and Madame Mozart is fabulous, as are all of the female characters in the book. The guys aren’t bad, but it’s the women who are best – much like in The Magic Flute…
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Thank you @sassymonkey for sending me The Virgin Cure since it isn’t available in the US for months and months. After waiting YEARS for this book, it was totally sucking to have to wait any longer – not that it wasn’t worth waiting for, I’d just prefer we not have to wait YEARS for Ami McKay’s next book.
I loved Moth. I loved Dr. Sadie. I loved Mr. Dink. I even loved the characters we maybe weren’t supposed to love. Mrs. Wentworth was super creepy and I could have nightmares about a woman like that. Poor Mae. Poor Alice. Poor Pear Tree, (OK maybe that’s going a little far – but seriously, great characters and setting. If I felt badly for a doggone Pear Tree, that’s got to tell you something about the book, right?)
I’d love to hear more about Moth – her days with the traveling show. I’d like to hear more about her taking in of girls and encouraging them to do great things. That was awesome. Go Moth! Heck, I’d even like to know what happened to Mae. And Cadet. And Rose. (We know what happens to Poor Alice.) I even wonder what happened with Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth – after Moth told Mr. Wentworth what she told him… was that enough to set some evil things to happening at home? I sure hope Nestor is ok…
Oops. I am rambling, aren’t I?
Good books cause me to do that.
My mother buzzed me to tell me that I should read Reading Jackie: Her Biography in Books – so I reserved it, even though my TBR list is huge. TW read it first, as usual, and ranted a good bit about the author and about Jackie, too.
I didn’t find much to rant about, the author’s tone at times is a bit troubling – he’s a man, after all, but I’ve read worse. Jackie – well, she was born in the late 20’s. Is it any wonder she didn’t want to be known as a brain? Her husband, the President, didn’t want her to be politically active – which also makes sense, look where that got Hillary decades later? Onassis was a dick, duh. All in all, I’d say there’s not much to complain about when you dig into who she was and what she did (or didn’t do.)
Looking at Jackie through the books she published at Viking and then Doubleday was interesting. I’ve only read a handful of them and now I find myself thinking about reserving a few more from the library. Maybe I’ll start with the Tiffany books, just for fun?
Interesting book – if you’re at all interested in Jackie (and who isn’t, right?)
I was looking forward to Dreams of Joy, the sequel to Shanghai Girls, because the ending of Shanghai Girls really left us hanging.
Unfortunately, it was a little to slow for me. And I just wanted to shake JOY every step of the way. Well maybe not there at the end but for the first 150 pages or so, at least.
I still liked Pearl. I even liked what little bit of May we got to see. And, I did like Z.G.. And Daun. And Cook.
It was Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy.
I understand that she was upset and confused and had a bit of brainwashing going on about China. But to have rushed into that – and to have been that blind to what was really happening… she was too smart for that. Or I thought she was. Apparently not?
If there had been a way to get Pearl to China, that didn’t involve Joy being an idiot – then I’d have liked this book a lot more, I think.
Three things about Ivy & Intrigue:
– I’m glad I didn’t read it when it first came out. Reading it close to Christmas and close to the next book made me happy.
– Lauren Willig should have written one holiday novella every year, in between books. That would have been awesome.
– I cannot wait for the next book (even if it is titled badly – a garden is not a flower!)