Recently, I attended a reader’s advisory course at work, and the genres discussed were Inspirational fiction and Chick Lit. I don’t care much for Inspirational fiction, but I do like Chick Lit, so I was looking forward to the course.
Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. The presenters and the majority of the people in the session treated Chick Lit very negatively. They made it seem like all Chick Lit was just a fluffy genre full of pastel covers featuring bubble gum snapping characters interested in nothing but shopping and bedding men, who are employed in fashion (or else unemployed but headed towards a great job in fashion), and, above all, nothing more than silly heroines with trivial problems. (more…)
This was my book club’s choice for March. You will either love this book, or you’ll hate it. Me? I hated it. I got a little over a quarter of the way through and I decided I wouldn’t finish it, not even for the book club.
And believe me, I had plenty of opportunity to read it in places where I had nothing else better to do. Sitting in a waiting room at the doctor’s office… I preferred to stare at the ceiling tiles. Sitting in a teensy 4′x3′ changing booth, wearing nothing but a hospital gown and waiting for what seemed like an eternity for the nurse to come get me for my neck ultrasound… I preferred to examine the caulking that ran along the baseboards.
I gave it a try, I really did. But… blech! The writing was dull. Actually, not so much dull and eyebrow-raising and “trying too hard.” Also, there was way too much repetition and straight-forward telling instead of showing. The first few chapters, all I could think was, “I can’t believe this story one bit.”
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There are good things about being in a book club, and there are some bad things. This book is one of those bad things. A member of my book club chose this book for us to read this month, and I hated it. Hate hate hate hated it.
There are only a few types of people that should read this book:
1. Asian history buffs. No wait… history professors. For their own reading “pleasure” and not mandatory class reading for their students.
2. Insomniacs without medical coverage for the good sleep-inducing drugs.
3. Margaret Drabble’s husband and close family. And only if she asks you to.
Honestly, I can barely stand to think about it again to write this review, but for the fact I could be sparing some of you from the same misfortune.
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