May Books

[slemslempike]

Slightly Single - Wendy Markham
My Shit Life So Far - Frankie Boyle
Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
That Summer - Sarah Dessen
Lord Edgware Dies - Agatha Christie
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris
When Last I Died - Gladys Mitchell
Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie
A Damsel in Distress - PG Wodehouse
Santaland Diaries - David Sedaris
The Ranch - Danielle Steel

Slightly Single was one of the unexpected (to me) romance novels that I got in the bundle of e-books from my friend with a dad on the oil rigs. There's a boy who clearly isn't into her, but they've been together for ages. He goes off to do summer stock, ignoring her, she meets a man whom she can't date because she's in a relationship with the awful actor, so she just loses weight until the actor breaks up with her when he comes back to New York.

I am not a huge fan of Frankie Boyle, but mostly because he was on Mock the Week far too much and they were all so ridiculous about how bad he was. Anyway - pretty interesting, especially about his time on the circuit and how he got to where he was in comedy.

I have been talking about Ancillary Justice to people ever since I finished it. I wasn't expecting to like it quite as much as I did - but the multiple bodied consciousness was really interesting (I don't read much sci-fi so it wasn't something I'd read much before). I also liked that everyone was given female pronouns. It made me happy to think that everyone wasn't a man.

I think I've had Sarah Dessen recommended to me a few times, but this is the first time I've acted on it. That Summer was fine? Kind of nothingy, but not necessarily in a bad way?

Lord Edgware Dies was clever! Actresses, impersonations, timings of dinner parties, being caught out by not knowing about Greek tragedies, well done Poirot.

I don't think I've reread Anne of Green Gables for at least a decade, and it was just as lovely as everything I remembered. This is the first time reading it that I really noticed how lovely it is with Marilla gradually letting herself love Anne, and how hard it is for her to show it. I downloaded the next few in the series from Gutenberg, but they corrupted so I need to try harder. Also Anne isn't as great when she grows up, but there you go. Such is womanhood in children's fiction.

I'd read quite a lot of the pieces in When you Are Engulfed in Flames before, so perhaps as a result of skipping half of it, nothing really stuck with me.

I've liked the Gladys Mitchell books that Greyladies republished, but When Last I Died was dull and confusing and the detective, Mrs Bradley, was deeply smug and annoying.

Foreign Affairs features two American academics from the same university separately transplanted to Londond for a small sabbatical. One writes about children's nursery rhymes, and is smarting after a nasty mention in the Atlantic magazine. She meets a Southern man she thinks is uncouth on the plane, but gradually falls in sort of love with him. The other one is supposed to be writing a book on a writer that I don't know whether is fictional or not, meets an actress who is also an Actual Lady and then leaves her to return to his feminist photographer wife, who he'd previously had a falling out with when she exhibitied a photo of two other men's cocks.

A Damsel in Distress was light and frothy and a little forgettable. Maud's aunt and brother are very concerned for the reputation of her family, and don't want her to marry a common man. So she marries a different common man, but a rich one.

I hadn't read any Danielle Steel before - and I was quite surprised. I was expecting either bonkbustery or full on Barbara Cartland romancey. It was more the latter than the former, but not very like either. Three friends from college go to a ranch together to get over a marriage breaking up over a child's suicide, a marriage breaking up over the wife's fame, and discovering that she has AIDS. Everyone lives happily every after with men at the end.

Comments

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I recently read the sequel to Ancillary Justice, and I like them too. The female pronouns make me think of reading girls' boarding school stories, with just an occasional man popping up here and there.

Re Foreign Affairs: I am very fond of Vinnie and Chuck and their friendship, and Vinnie's shocking research subjects. Many of Lurie's books are loosely connected with characters recurring in them, so Leonard Zimmern, the critic who rubbishes Vinnie's work, appears as a child in Only Children and an adult in The Truth About Lorin Jones, and Fred Turner's family in Love and Friendship. And so on.

Everyone lives happily every after with men at the end. That sentence made me laugh.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I suppose "with men" was redundant - is there really any happy ever after that doesn't involve heterosexuality? Society would suggest not.

Yes, it was very like girlsown! Lots of lovely non-men all over the place.