Twenties Girl and Can You Keep a Secret - Sophie Kinsella

When I was at the library getting books for Florida, it occurred to me that some Sophie Kinsella would be perfect for the beach.  It ended up being a good choice.  I read these two during the week we were there in a variety of places: lounging by the ocean, laid out on the couch in the apartment, curled up late in bed one night...


I'm putting them both here in the same post partly because I'm sick of this backlog and just want to catch up, and partly because all the Sophie Kinsella I've read so far is similar in feel if not in plot or substance.  I only just read one of her books for the first time last year after my curiosity was piqued by the sheer amount of women coming into the bookstore looking for her titles.  I read Remember Me and understood why. 


Kinsella writes completely hilarious books with scenes that border on outrageous while still managing to seem like something that could happen to you.  Though her books are definitely chick lit that is not to say that they don't have great twists and likeable characters you end up cheering for.  It seems that a common thread of her writing is the idea of being somewhat lost, with or without realizing it, and searching for one's self/purpose/jumping off point.  This is the kind of authour where you know you could pick up any of her books and enjoy it.  


I liked both of these and they were exactly what I wanted - a good story with a quick continuous flow that makes it a low-key read.  Her humour is just a fantastic bonus; I love Kinsella's real-girl heroines.  For some reason I picture them all as the girl from the Confessions of a Shopaholic movie, though of course they are portrayed differently and read as separate people.  I just can't shake the mental image kept picturing the characters as that one girl.   The Confessions series, which I haven't read, is very popular and those are probably Kinsella's most-read books.  She's a British authour with most of the books set in London and (fun fact) also writes under the name Madeline Wickham. 


Just some quick thoughts on the ones I read - Twenties Girl is a kind of modern ghost story, lots of very cool twenties detail thrown in, brings home that idea of never knowing everything about someone, even a family member, of there being so much to a life - of having to ask the right questions to know a full story. It made me want some vintage dresses so bad. 


Can You Keep a Secret was maybe a little more fast-paced and has some great scenes with semi crazy roommates - a good portrayal of the nuances of many different kinds of relationships and the perils of honesty. 

Juliet, Immortal - Stacey Jay

When I took the previous few books back the library, I was on a mission.  I was leaving for Florida the next day and I needed enough books to last me the drive there and back along with 7 days pure vacation. This sounds like a ridiculous amount of thought or caring to put into such a task but obviously, I am serious about my reading.  I wanted books for the 24-hour drive that would pull me in so deep I wouldn't be able to stop reading and the hours would fly by. It can be so, so satisfying to be able to just read a whole book through uninterrupted and I didn't want to end up with crap books that I would regret taking up room in the small bag I was taking.  


Unfortunately, a lot of the books I had in mind when I went in to the library that day were unavailable. To some extent, I had to wing it.  However, there was one book I had had on hold - it had been released the day before as I hadn't had time yet to come in.  I decided to start there and went up to the teen section to find it, thinking it would be perfect for the drive down.


Teen books have come a long, long way since I first started reading teen books.  I'm jealous of kids these days who now have ever-increasing square footage devoted to them in bookstores.  It used to be one pitiful row of shelves.  Many of the girls I used to work with loved teen books and we'd of course talk about them while we were working.  Juliet, Immortal I came across on my own while reshelving some books and the cover caught me (I'm starting to really see that that's a theme with me).  It's just gorgeous.  The jacket sounded promising, and I made a mental note to read it at some point.  


So, many months later, I'm in a car with my boyfriend and two friends of ours, trucking down the I-75 and I'm reading this book.  It has a really interesting premise that is a little foggy in some ways - essentially Romeo and Juliet existed, their original story closely follows the one we are familiar with except for a crucial detail: at the final moment, Romeo betrayed Juliet.  He murdered her in exchange for an eternal existence, flitting in and out through time.  What he didn't count on was that Juliet would be saved before her last spark of life could go out (by her Nurse) and would be offered a chance at a similar existence.  Think of Romeo working for the powers of evil and Juliet working for the powers of good, and them having to fight against each other for several hundred years.  This concept is part of the book that is very interesting, but could be much stronger. 


That is all setup for the main part of the story, which takes place in our present time with Romeo and Juliet occupying the bodies of teens in the same town and each working with a very different motive.


All in all, it definitely kept my attention, mainly because of the whole idea of Romeo and Juliet being immortal.  The best part, or most effective part, might have been the role of Romeo cast as an evil character. Still for all it's great bits and pieces, I would have loved to see this story fleshed out more, standing on a stronger foundation. It would have made a fantastic and possibly classic adult book, written in the right way.  It seems like there are a lot of teen books that are like this, and I'm not sure if that reflects publishers' greed or a general ambivalence toward the quality of what teens get to read or a little of both. Probably both with a leaning towards the former. 


Side note: for some reason I didn't even think to bring a book light, and was mostly finished when it got too dark to read. I was lucky that my friends had some mini flashlights in the car (partly because we're theatre technicians and it's the kind of thing you just have around, partly because they as a rule tend to be over-prepared). 

Girls in White Dresses - Jennifer Close

Surprise, surprise, it's been a long time since I've been here to write.  I'm many books behind and a whole lot has happened in the few weeks since I last took a minute to write about what I'd read.  It seems like such a simple concept and yet it seems I make it so hard.  However, I have made (yet another) resolution to try very hard to do just this one simple thing, and take those few moments, and just write it out.  It is one of many simple resolutions I have been making lately which, if all goes well, will combine to create some favorable change/forward action in my life.  

Besides all that, I was initially drawn to this book, like many others, when I came across it at the bookstore I used to work at.  It has a beautiful cover, and I think my very first thought about it was just, 'I want that dress.'  The affair with this particular book carried on like many others, in the form of me continuously picking it up and reading the jacket, then adding it to that booklist I made when I eventually got around to making it, and then finally getting from the library probably about a month ago now, in that same batch as Stargirl and the Paper Garden. 

I think I actually read this right after the Paper Garden and before Stargirl, but I can't really be certain because of the time that's now passed.  I do know I read it pretty much in one go and just stayed up way too late, curled up in my living room.  It was easy to do because of the way the story is told. The narrative follows a group of girls through thier twenties.  It is told almost in scenes...each piece of the whole story told in little pieces; the bare minimum needed to get the essence of the fact of what's happened.  It is a surprisingly elegant and fresh take on some fairly common threads.  The effect is very fresh.  I loved it.  I found everything in it - it could be funny, or heartwrenching, or a scene from my own life.  This is a book that feels like a good long talk with your best girlfriends.  Glad I finally read it. 

The Paper Garden - Molly Peacock

This book had been on my list for so long that I had forgotten what it was, or why I put it on there.  A few weeks ago I googled the title (which was the only thing I had written) and then got the book from the library.  As soon as I saw the cover I was reminded of the numerous times I had picked it up and read the jacket during long hours at my previous job; remembered how much I had wanted to read it.

I felt like it took me forever to read; I must have carried this book around for over a week, dragging it from place to place and cracking it open whenever I had a chance. It's not that it's particularly long, but I was reading in short bursts and would stop for a day or so from time to time.  I was also showing it to everyone who came near me because each chapter is preceded by a beautiful colour plate of a bright flower against a back blackground - I would push the flower under people's noses, wait for them to oooh and ahhh, tell them, 'that's made out of paper' and get a kick out of their amazement.

This is really an amazing story.  Mostly biography, part memoir, it follows the life of Mary Delany, a minor aristocrat living in 1700s England.  She had an extraordinary and long life packed with the triumphs and tragedies that make up our years.  In her case, they are all the more interesting because of her class and location in time.  She was essentially sold at the age of 17 to an alcoholic 60-year old, horrific, to be sure, but luckily he died a few years later and she found herself at 23 to finally be able to live in her own skin and have more freedom in terms of choosing how to live her life.  Luckily that life, for the most part, had steady upswings and it seems she found many years of happiness. It was only in her final years, her early 70s, that she began a project that would give her lasting fame in the art world and beyond - she began making collages of paper flowers.

The biographer, Ms Peacock, became entranced by these collages and over time came to ask herself the question, how was Ms Delany able to make them?  Not strictly in the literal sense, of what kind of paper did she use, or paint, or where did she get the glue....but what drove her to the creation of these remarkable flowers, so unlike anything else that exists?  The authour's quest for an answer led her through years of correspondence and research, and enabled her to tell this story of Mary Delany's life.

I love biographies, and have particularly enjoyed reading those of women who managed to break ground in their relatively restrictive time periods.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was entranced by this woman's life, courage, resilience and capacity for love.  Her art is in every way a reflection of her personal story, and it's beauty all the more astounding for it's composition.

My only dislike about this book was the way the authour wove her own story into that of her subject's.  Some of the connections she made between her own life and Ms Delany's felt contrived, and it reads almost like she is speaking up out of turn.  I see why she wanted to illustrate why she became so interested in Mary Delany, but her story could have been summarized into an afterword or chapter at the end of the book in order to let the main story shine clearer.  Her writing is engrossing and poetic (of course, she's a poet) but I definitely felt that it would do more justice to the main story of Delany's life if bits of the authour's semi-memoir weren't interspersed throughout like jutting rocks.

Still, it is testament to the strength and power of the story of Mary Delany's life that I would still love to own this book despite everything I just said above.  I would also love, love love to have some prints of her flowers to put up in my apartment. My favorite were the roses; they match my tattoo.

Love, Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli

I've had this sitting around my house for a while because I got it from the library when I went and got All Clear.  For whatever reason it just took me a while to get into it, but when I finally did I read it in an afternoon (as I said, I have a lot of time on my hands just now).

I loved the Stargirl book when I was a kid and I think it's part of the stack of teen books my dad is letting me store at his place until some future time when I have the extra space.  Also loved There's A Girl In My Hammerlock by the same authour, though I couldn't describe exactly why.  But when I saw there was a sequel to Stargirl, I had to read it.

Unfortunately I can't say I loved it. It's good, no doubt, nice afternoon read. It's cool to re-visit the story, the character.  She's definitely an interesting character, and she comes through clearly in the book as if no time has passed.  This book is told from the perspective of Stargirl herself, too, which is cool as well.  I think the main reason I felt a little disappointed by it was because I thought it was going to be further on in time; that she and Leo would re-unite by the end, or be together as adults.  So it wasn't what I was expecting.  It's essentially more of the same but told by Stargirl rather than Leo.  At the end there's that same sense that they will be together again...at some point.  Definitely nice to get a bit more of the classic story though.

The interesting thing about the Stargirl story is that in my experience it's pretty universally well-loved.  I even stayed briefly with a bizarre girl in Calgary who had re-named herself Stargirl because she liked the book so much.  I find myself hoping she knows there's another and has read it, because I'm sure it would make her really happy.  Meeting her also made me wonder how many other real-life Stargirls are out there.

My favorite part of the book: the dedication.  Love, Stargirl is dedicated to the sixteen grandchildren Mr Spinelli and his wife have at the time of printing.  How great is that?

Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares

When I was almost done reading The Golden Compass, I was fired from the Swiss Chalet where I had been working for just under a month as a server.  I had been in 'training' the entire time and was only on my 5th shift serving tables by myself when they (the owner and her son) called me into the office at the end of it to say they didn't feel I was catching on quick enough and they didn't feel comfortable putting me on the night shift.  It was very, very awkward.  I've never been fired before, have never had someone say I wasn't picking something up, or even that I wasn't doing well (at anything)......so it was a pretty new experience.

When I walked out and got into my (freezing) car I also realized it was something of a relief knowing I'd never have to see those particular people again.  I have been very lucky in my working career to have always worked for (and with) exceptionally great people, and I know first-hand how valuable a fantastic manager is.  So I suppose it was only a matter of time before I had the polar opposite experience.  The upside to everything was that I've discovered that I really liked working as a server, and as a part-time job it definitely suits me (I love being busy, and working hard). So hopefully I'll find a position somewhere better in the near future.

Anyway, I mention all that because it is the reason I've had so much empty time on my hands lately.  That night I went home and finished Golden Compass; the next day I woke up knowing I wanted to do nothing but lay on my sunny couch and re-read this Sisterhood book, and let my wounded ego rest.

Every Wednesday I go and join a group of awesome girls in a shabby arena; huddled on unforgiving benches we gossip and watch our boyfriends/friends/brothers play hockey.  Before Christmas I caught a glimpse of this book in my boyfriend's sister's bag and had a conversation with her about how much I had loved it.  On Christmas day at her parent's house I was very very happy to receive it as a gift from her, and I've been wanting to read it again ever since.

My girlfriends and I all tore through the Sisterhood books as they came out when we were in our teens; I remember when the first movie came out we all skipped and went to see it together.  Brashares writes with so much love, and so much reality - everything her girls go through resonates with truth.  This is one reason my friends and I related so strongly to the stories; we could clearly see ourselves, and our friendship, reflected within them.

This last book is like an unexpected gift. It is a fantastic and unique experience to get to re-visit characters you 've loved for so long, and to re-visit them as adults is even better.  Yes, it's true, this book is heart-wrenchingly sad and chock-full of grief.  But that is something that resonates with me too, and sometimes it's a comfort to read what you've felt and lived through, even things that hurt.  I've always loved the lines full of grace and poetry that her books are full of.  I'm in the habit of folding up the bottom corner of pages in books that just ring through my head, and all my copies of her books are full of these bent pages.

This book was the perfect thing for my first day of semi-unemployment (I do work at a theatre but it's only for a few shifts a month).

So lucky for me that my love's sister is so very awesome.

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

I read this early last week, and have read several others since, failing my intention to write immediately after finishing a book.  I fear what it says about me to lose track so soon.  Especially considering the fact that I have been doing basically nothing the past week and have had lots of time to come here and write my impressions. I've thought about it so many times but just couldn't bring myself to do it til now. So here I am.

Read this early last week; it's one of the books I bought with my gift certificates from the local used bookstore just after the new year. I actually picked up the whole series in mass-market paperback, with great old-school covers, but I only read the first one; will get to the others eventually.  Now that they sit in my possession I'm just happy knowing they're there.

I first read the series back in high school. We had to read The Golden Compass for my gr 10 English class, and when I finished it I just went through and read the others because I always have to know what happens. I remember my teacher (who was generally disliked and heavily mocked by myself and peers) talking to my mother at the parent-teacher interview that year about how I had finished the rest of the series.  He was saying something along the lines that he hoped we had talked about it because he felt it was a 'dangerous' book.

He meant dangerous in the context of the fact that he is a Reverend and I guess wanted to make sure my mom wasn't letting me get any crazy ideas about religion from the books.  She said something about not censoring what I read, and he said something about 'well even so, you wouldn't want her reading something like Clockwork Orange' at which point my mother turned to me and said, 'have you read Clockwork Orange?'  The Reverend immediately blushed and said 'no, I wasn't trying to suggest that you'd let her read that - ' which my warrior mother nipped in the bud by saying 'I only ask her because I've got it on the bookshelf at home.'  And I quietly cheered.  And of course searched it out as soon as we were back home, and read, and loved.  It was one of my first experiences with the idea of people trying to censor children, or teenagers; with the idea of a book being dangerous, of an idea being dangerous....a concept which continues to enthrall and delight me.

Besides those other memories associated with this book, the strongest one was probably how much I had loved the idea of daemons, and how bad it made me want one.  The whole world is so clearly drawn, Lyra's character one you become quite attached to.  All the characters, really, including that of poor Roger.  I was very happy to find I enjoyed this book just as much as I did back in grade ten, and felt so satisfied re-visiting it.