Books

Book 349: The Edge of Reason (Bridget Jones #2) – Helen Fielding

If possible this one was even funnier than Bridget Jones’s Diary, or at least the ending was. There were parts in both books where I could not stop laughing, but this one ended with such a hilarious situation that I could easily find myself in involving wine and Christmas cards. I didn’t read this one quite as fast as the first, but I still read it in only a few sittings.

What I enjoyed most about this novel was the unapologetic sexuality and brashness of Bridget. This was evident in the first novel, but in this novel she takes it to a different level, primarily manifesting through keeping track of the seconds, yes SECONDS, since she last had sex. (It’s up in the tens of millions.) Now this might sound strange, but Fielding writes about issues that affect large sweeps of the population through this quirky character.

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Books

Book 346: Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones #1) – Helen Fielding

I picked up a copy of this and the sequel, Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, back in January 2014 because they were like $2 each. I knew I wouldn’t read it right away, but what I didn’t know is that when I read it would take less than six hours, including a two-hour walk in the middle of it! I grabbed it to read as it was a quick read. I remembered hearing things around Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the third book released last year so I figured why not now.

Let’s start with the film adaptation: I LOVED it. The cast was perfect and what they changed was for a reason. It worked as a stand-alone, but even as an adaptation I felt it worked well. That being said, this book was hilariously funny and if you enjoyed the film you should definitely check out the book.

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Books

Book 343: Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks

I picked this novel up back in November 2012, and as is usually the case, I’m sad I didn’t read it sooner. I enjoyed Brooks’ March, but apparently not enough to buy and read the rest of her works immediately.

Zombies may be all the rage these days, but plague has been around and written about for so much longer. Zombies, according to Wikipedia at least, didn’t appear in popular culture until the 1800s, whereas plague has been a stark reality off-and-on since the 1300s.

Now imagine three hundred years after the Black Death ravaged Europe, you live in a small village with fewer than 500 people in central England. In less than a year more than 2/3 of the people were dead and you were one of the survivors to witness this and all of it is because of the plague. What would you do? How would you respond? Well this is that village’s tale and the flashback to what happened in this “plague village,” and it is not the only plague village, check out Eyam via Wikipedia.

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Books

Book 329: A Jane Austen Education – William Deresiewicz

Warning: Goodreads rant – skip to second paragraph. I’m not sure what jumped up everyone’s butts on Goodreads (I shouldn’t really be surprised), but this book doesn’t deserve as much vitriol as it has received on the site. So many people trashed it without even finishing the book, many obviously had read the synopsis and yet were shocked at what they read.

The book definitely deserves a lot of the criticism, but it doesn’t deserve the pure vitriol that Goodreads reviewers thew at it. Sure, I wanted to smack Deresiewicz for being an insufferable grad student, but it’s very clear in the synopsis that the book was going to be full of naval gazing. He made a couple of questionable sexist and classist comments and he may have reduced a lot of Austen’s genius down to basics, but it would definitely work for people who are not familiar with Austen. Seriously, if you can’t find the good in a book, why bother finishing and trashing it? Just move on to the next book.

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Books

Book 301: Chocolat (Chocolat #1) – Joanne Harris

This book has been on my to-be-read shelf for so long it took quite a while to trace where and when I bought it! I apparently picked it up way back in October 2012 when I helped out at the Somerville Public Library book sale! I’m glad I grabbed a copy. I own a copy of the film, but for some reason I never realized they adapted it from a novel!

Add in that when random.org selected it as my next book and I prepared to read it I found out it was a trilogy, my mind was BLOWN! I was a little grumpy at first, because I had a plan worked out to read more of my to-be-read shelf and was trying really hard not to add more in between the books, but I do love a good trilogy! I plan to read two and three, The Girl With No Shadow and Peaches for Father Francis, in the next few weeks and am VERY excited about them!

Now on to the story and my response!