#2
Title: Shoe Addicts Anonymous
Author: Beth Harbison
Thoughts: So cute! So exactly what I was in the mood for this morning! Though light in tone, it nevertheless had interesting characters in interesting situations. It was neither too trite nor too heavy, and I couldn't put it down. I look forward to reading more books from her.
Sunday, 11 November 2007
Book: The Stylist
Books in twos continues...
Title: The Stylist
Author: Cai Emmons
Thoughts: Another instance in which the cover and the book just don't match. The cover says chick-lit. The style, the story, the writing all say something a little more serious. When I picked it up I wanted chick-lit. When I finished I was glad I'd read it. Cai Emmons has a real knack for language, and several times I stopped in the middle of a passage to reflect on a beautiful sentence or word choice. I picked up her debut in the library yesterday---it has much more of a literary cover. I hope I'll enjoy it just as much.
Title: The Stylist
Author: Cai Emmons
Thoughts: Another instance in which the cover and the book just don't match. The cover says chick-lit. The style, the story, the writing all say something a little more serious. When I picked it up I wanted chick-lit. When I finished I was glad I'd read it. Cai Emmons has a real knack for language, and several times I stopped in the middle of a passage to reflect on a beautiful sentence or word choice. I picked up her debut in the library yesterday---it has much more of a literary cover. I hope I'll enjoy it just as much.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Book: Harmony
Book number two!
Title: Harmony
Author: Joanna Goodman
Thoughts: I liked a lot of this book, even though I felt it took a while for me to care about what was happening. It suffered, a little, from a main character who verged pretty heavily on unlikeable. It's hard to stick with someone who spends the majority of 345 pages either whining and complaining or thinking about whining and complaining--even if she does have perfectly good reasons for those complaints. Such is the difficulty, sometimes, when writing a character who is not immediately lovable, or who behaves in a way most people try to believe they would not behave (right down to the jealousy and contemplation of infidelity, whining and complaining aside!)
Honestly, I wanted to know more about the other characters in this novel, because the main character exhausted me so thoroughly I could only read a chapter at a time before switching back to other novels on the go.
Title: Harmony
Author: Joanna Goodman
Thoughts: I liked a lot of this book, even though I felt it took a while for me to care about what was happening. It suffered, a little, from a main character who verged pretty heavily on unlikeable. It's hard to stick with someone who spends the majority of 345 pages either whining and complaining or thinking about whining and complaining--even if she does have perfectly good reasons for those complaints. Such is the difficulty, sometimes, when writing a character who is not immediately lovable, or who behaves in a way most people try to believe they would not behave (right down to the jealousy and contemplation of infidelity, whining and complaining aside!)
Honestly, I wanted to know more about the other characters in this novel, because the main character exhausted me so thoroughly I could only read a chapter at a time before switching back to other novels on the go.
Book: The River King
I'm just not very good at keeping this thing up to date as I finish, but I'm still trying.
So. The first of two more books to add to my reading list.
Title: The River King
Author: Alice Hoffman
Thoughts: I went through a phase about six months ago where I mainlined all the Alice Hoffman books I could find at my local used bookstore (this was back before the library became such a precious fixture in my life). She has a style that is... interesting, to say the least. She writes beautifully, in a way I admire and wish I could replicated, but which also breaks so many rules I've come to believe are Writing Law. She's forever waxing poetic with prose just this shade of purple, and she has an irritating habit of jumping POV in the middle of chapters or sections or even paragraph to paragraph. Yet, somehow it works. Somehow the story ends up beautiful, magical, readable and almost cinematic.
I still think she's a writer I should only read in small doses, but I know I'll probably catch up on her entire bibliography eventually. Jumping POVs and overuse of adjectives notwithstanding.
So. The first of two more books to add to my reading list.
Title: The River King
Author: Alice Hoffman
Thoughts: I went through a phase about six months ago where I mainlined all the Alice Hoffman books I could find at my local used bookstore (this was back before the library became such a precious fixture in my life). She has a style that is... interesting, to say the least. She writes beautifully, in a way I admire and wish I could replicated, but which also breaks so many rules I've come to believe are Writing Law. She's forever waxing poetic with prose just this shade of purple, and she has an irritating habit of jumping POV in the middle of chapters or sections or even paragraph to paragraph. Yet, somehow it works. Somehow the story ends up beautiful, magical, readable and almost cinematic.
I still think she's a writer I should only read in small doses, but I know I'll probably catch up on her entire bibliography eventually. Jumping POVs and overuse of adjectives notwithstanding.
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