Books that I both began and finished reading in July 2011:
– Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. Ah Shopaholic! I’ve read these books dozens of times but hadn’t read them in a while. Still haven’t seen the movie, but it looks like crap, so I’m not planning on that (and that’s saying a lot, coming from me… I like really awful movies). Anyway, I now want to go shopping at high-end expensive shops.
– Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella. Okay, so I have to admit something here. I have a really big thing for chick flicks and chick lit. The plots are always terrible, the scripts/writing style are always awful, but it’s my guilty pleasure. It was fun to indulge!
– Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella. Once I get on a chick lit kick, I find it difficult to snap out of it. I think I powered through all three of these books within about four days. If you like chick lit, if you enjoy fashion, and if you need some super light summer reading, this series is awesome for it. I haven’t read anything else by Kinsella but I’ve always enjoyed these three books. I believe there’s at least two more in the series that I’ve never read… must go on the hunt to find them.
– Shopaholic & Sister by Sophie Kinsella. Surprise! I found the fourth one at a favourite secondhand bookstore!
– Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger. Okay, this is starting to get embarrassing. So much for reading great literary works of art by Jack London and Ernest Hemingway and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I need to stamp “I read trashy novels” across my forehead or something. On another note, I quite enjoyed this novel. It’s only the second time I’ve read it.
– The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. Oh, shut up. And yes I had fun reading this book.
Books I started reading but have yet to finish:
– Nutrition Now by Judith E. Brown. This is my nutrition text book for my diploma program. I love it. It has great information and it’s really interesting! I’m almost halfway through it.
I also read the first few chapters of a few other books too, like Candace Bushnall’s Sex and the City and Four Blondes (they’re both boring. Wasn’t crazy about her writing style, either. Rather disappointed, considering the TV show is so awesome), Leslie Goldman’s Locker Room Diaries (love this book and Leslie but just wasn’t in the mood for it) and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice (I’ve read it once before, but also wasn’t in the mood to read it… it’s a little too intense for my liking, ha). Didn’t feel much like completing any of them at this time, though.
What did you read last month? Do you have a secret favourite genre? Now you know that I read obscene amounts of chick lit and actually like them, so it’s only fair you spill too 😉
Hi Sagan
Sorry it’s been so long since I commented. I meant to comment right back when you said you had tears in your eyes when the turkey lays an egg at the end of ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’. So did I! I was really shocked by the indignities which have been inflicted on the turkey in the name of cheap meat. I’ve always had bad feelings about them in the run up to Thanksgiving in the US and to Christmas in many countries, at the thought of all those chicks growing so fast and then all that slaughter, but had no idea they had been so distorted as well, and so de-turkyised, if that’s the equivalent of dehumanised. I was cheering when that turkey laid an egg! There are wild turkeys in New Zealand that you see roaming round and I always love the thought of them.
I also started The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo last year some time and didn’t finish it. Like you I found it seemed to wallow in the violence, and also it seemed to me to be exploiting some very sad real cases. I don’t like novels to be sanitised but on the other hand brutality of that sort is much rarer than crime novels would suggest and it’s a bit disturbing how popular it is. I’m not a big fan of those kinds of tv programmes or films either. One book about violence which I found absolutely compelling, though, was Roddy Doyle’s “The Woman Who Walked Into Doors”, about domestic violence. I used to be responsible for reducing DV in England and his portrayal of the narrator and her marriage are all too credible, but the reader’s focus is on empathy and cheering her on as she struggles to overcome her problems, not on the almost voyeuristic attitude which I think a lot of crime novels encourage.
It’s great to see you reading some chick lit! No one can read Dosteovsky or nutrition manuals all the time – let’s hear it for chick lit once in a while! I read Shopaholic when it first came out and loved it, though I’ve not read any of the sequels. Must borrow them from the library some time! There is one called “…. And Baby” too I think. Have you read any of Marian Keyes’ books? She is a fabulous writer and I reckon her books will gradually creep out of the chick lit category and still be read in 20 or 30 years at least. I love “Watermelon”, “Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married”, and “Rachel’s Holiday”. I also love Sheila O’Flanaghan, is she published in Canada? Especially Suddenly Single, despite it’s cringe-making title, and Far From Over.
I’ve not read much of interest recently. At the moment I’m reading Deborah Devonshire’s autobiography, ‘Wait for Me!’ she was the youngest of the Mitford sisters. One book you would LOVE I am sure is Jessica Mitford’s essays “The Making of a Muckraker”, which has recently been republished as something else. It’s basically about being a journalist. In the 1950s she wrote the fabulous “The American Way of Death”, an expose of the funeral industry, which was a bestseller and led to the industry overhauling itself. The most famous sister was Nancy, who wrote “The Pursuit of Love” and “Love in a Cold Climate’, which are very very entertaining indeed. There are two minor characters in the latter book, sisters called , I think, Jassy and Victoria, and those two are clearly Jessica and Deborah. (They are also incidentally just like me & my sister at that kind of age!). There were a couple of other sisters who were basically nazis so all in all they were a very diverse and emphatic family. The one called Unity always sounds pathological. Anyway, Deborah D’s book is interesting, a way of living which totally died out after the war.
Next on my list is “battle hymn of the tiger mother”, and Apsley Cherry Garrard’s book The Worst Journey In the World. Cherry Garrard went with Scott on the South Pole expedition, which was in 1911, so I know a blaze of centenary publicity will kick in this autumn. It is a stunning book, so beautifully written, and he was clearly a very nice, brave and kind man, whatever people may think about Scott himself.
Enough! Looking forward to seeing your August list and will try to comment a bit quicker!
Liz
Have just googled Jessica Mitford and it turns out JK Rowling named her daughter after her! Learn something new every day… Also I forgot to say she eloped at 17 with her cousin to fight in the Spanish Civil War (for the republicans it goes without saying) so was a bit of an all round dude.
It’s always amazing to read about the lives of the authors! That’s really cool.
I haven’t read anything by Keyes yet and I hadn’t even heard of O’Flanaghan – I’ve added them to my list of books to search for in the second-hand stores. Always need to have extra chick lit on hand 🙂
Love your comments 🙂