See The Sun

Reading

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 | Book

I’m on a roll: reading books back-to-back. Sometimes I honestly get ‘overdozed’ by movies (and being online) so books remain my ‘other’ resort. These are the books I read over the past 7 days:

First, I read some horrid book (I can’t even remember either its title or author) supposedly about twins changing places (I’m always falling for stories like that) but the charade (which I was reading the book for) was over after only a few pages and the writing style beyond acceptable. I’m convinced I could have written such a book too (and that is saying something, I absolutely hate my writing style).

Then Would You? by Deanna Kizis. It was good, I suppose: the characters well-drawn, the plot being interesting enough without being either too obvious or too forced and the writing good. But, I may have the wrong age for it. In any case my weighings of the importance of events was often directly opposed to that of the author.

Then came THE glorious re-read: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I’ve been meaning to re-read the whole book for a while now, and finally I managed. After all, I have a luxury edition of a book containing all the Brontë novels - I can’t take it with me to read while commuting. (That version cost the same amount as 2 paper-back Brontë novels, thus I naturally decided on that edition). I absolutely loved every sentence of the book, well, almost. I noticed a few sentences that reflect the difference in time, but nothing serious. I also liked its spiritual/religious aspects and references, I had quite forgotten about them. They were not in the foreground at all but added to the story.

Lastly, I read Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married by Marian Keyes. I don’t care if this is not a literary masterpiece. Nor if it’s considered ‘cheap’. I loved it. The characters felt so real! And the author didn’t skip difficult scenes - she had them all in full dialogue rather than to just cut to a scene after the ‘difficult scene’ thus avoiding what I consider the most challenging part of writing novels: To fully tell a story without sounding cliché-like, soapy, cheap, embarrassing or the like. Congrats to the writer for managing to avoid these pitholes! The whole story felt complete, without missing links. It’s not that I want all the loose ends to be nicely tied up (at least not plot-wise), but I want to know/feel how the characters develop, esp. if they’re on journey and are a different or more mature person at the end of the story. I want to know how they got there. Otherwise I don’t believe it!! Anyway, I found out about a TV mini-series made of it, but I have no inclination to see it - even if it were available on some form of media, which it isn’t. One of the best parts of the main character Lucy, I felt, was that she was ‘normal’: small without being frail (meaning: having no tits but average hips, or sth along these lines), freckles and curly, untamable hair etc. How could they turn her into a tall, slim blonde?! It opposes everything about who Lucy is supposed to be!!! And where is the contrast to her beautiful female companions? Anyway, I would have loved to see Gerard Butler in this, but since it’s nowhere available I won’t mind too much. Maybe, I overdid the reading though: I read the whole 670 pages yesterday (through to today’s early hours, where is my resolve??!) and reading about someone who has problems getting up in the morning and is still suffering somewhat from depressions is not really the book to cheer me up, is it? Anyway. I really loved it. Period.

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