The Bookshop on the Corner

The title: The Bookshop on the Corner
The author: Jenny Colgan
Publication: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2016
Got it from: Chapters

I haven't read anything else by Jenny Colgan, but I liked the premise of this one so I got it from the library, and then ended up buying a copy for a relative.  Nina Redmond is a 29-year-old librarian in Birmingham whose library is being converted into an "information hub."  Being an old-fashioned book lover, Nina is neither willing nor able to work in this sort of environment.  As a librarian who despairs of the creeping business model of libraries and all the attendant "business speak," this book made me nod my head in agreement.

At first, Nina is lost and unsure of what to do with herself.  All she knows is matching people to books, so that's what she decides on.  Without much of a plan, she heads to an isolated town in Scotland to buy a van to transport all the books the library is throwing out.  Naturally, she ends up staying as she gets to know the locals, including a romantic train driver who goes through the town every night and her grumpy-yet-surprisingly-sexy landlord.  Before she knows what's happening, she's got everyone in town hooked on reading and finds herself falling in love with the village.

This book is feel-good, through and through.  It put a smile on my face.  Even though it was predictable, it was cute without being cutesy and I really liked the descriptions of the Scottish countryside and all the sheep. 

Dietland

The title: Dietland
The author: Sarai Walker
Publication: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks

I actually finished listening to this book on audiobook a few weeks ago, and it has been running through my mind ever since.  It's not the usual sort of book I read, but then again I don't think there's another book like it.  I would never have picked it up except something about it piqued my interest from the reviews.  That something is, "shadowy feminist group takes revenge against scumbag men."

But to say "that's what it's about" is to do a disservice to this book, because it's much more complicated than that.  If I were to sum it up as succinctly as possible, I'd say it's about a self-loathing, obese twentysomething woman who goes on a journey of self-acceptance and opens her eyes to the reality of the world around her.  If you read the reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere, you'll see this book has divided a lot of readers due to its strong feminist perspective.

I can imagine that if you're not already a hardcore feminist (as I am), some of the book's revelations about the way men treat women might seem shocking.  But when you're talking about a scenario where women are kidnapping men who brutally rape a young woman (for example), and then dropping them on a freeway, the idea isn't supposed to be "is this right or wrong?"  It's to take a look at the millions and millions of instances of injustices women have faced, and think, "what would it actually be like if even a tiny fraction of violence men do to us were turned on them?"

Men's rights activists can breath easy: that's not likely to happen any time soon.  Even the novel's heroine, Plum, is shocked and horrified by the actions of the secret feminist action group, known as "Jennifer" (after a name on a piece of paper stuffed in a victim's mouth.)  Well, she is at first - when she's a downtrodden, miserable hermit with a crappy dead-end job.  If people take nothing else from this book, they will remember its depiction of the various ways Plum suffers because of her weight.

And it's brutal. I mean really, really brutal. This book holds nothing back in highlighting the shameful, disgraceful way our society, and particularly men, treat women who are overweight.  Plum's journey is heartbreaking, from her unhappy childhood to her teenage suffering on an awful diet plan to her current life as the faceless agony aunt behind the "Dear Kitty" letters in a teen magazine. Seeing the various ways Plum gets rejected, harassed and even beaten by men who are complete strangers simply for being overweight is painful.  No wonder she's desperate to have gastric bypass surgery and unleash the thinner "Alicia" she thinks is inside her.

The book takes a turn for the better when she gets taken in by a group of outcast activist women, led by Verena Baptist, the daughter of Plum's one-time weight-loss guru.  Fans of mythic tropes will recognize many aspects of the hero's quest in the way Plum must undergo a series of challenges to transform herself (at first for money, later purely for her own benefit).  Eventually, Plum is reborn.  I won't spoil it for you, except to say that her eventual self-acceptance is long, painful and triumphant.

As for Jennifer?  It didn't bother me.  Some of the stunts they pulled were actually pretty funny: my favourite was when they blackmailed a British tabloid to replace the page three girl with naked men. Eventually England is covered in images of buff men and women flock from all over the world  to see it.

I'm not even sure this book is actually condoning the violence, although these particular men largely deserve it.  Instead, it's flipped the violence around in a way we're not used to seeing.  As the main character in the wonderful movie Suffragette says, "We break windows, be burn things, because war is the only thing men listen to."

Sometimes in books, things get ugly.  They show the world as it is, not as we want it to be.  I hope it will be a revelation to any woman reading this novel that we should live our lives to please ourselves first.  As one of my favourite Oscar Wilde sayings goes, "to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

Royal Wedding

The title: Royal Wedding
The author: Meg Cabot
Publication: HarperCollins, 2015
Got it from: The library

Remember all the way back in 2009 when I was binge-reading the Princess Diaries series and I thought it was all over?  Well, it turns out that Mia's back! 

I was as excited as the next fan to spend time with all the characters again.  Neurotic Mia is now 26 and dividing her time between being Princess of Genovia and running a youth centre in NYC.  I don't want to spoil any other revelations, but we get an update on all her high school friends too.  Michael, who still suffers from being styrofoam bland, whisks Mia away for an island vacation where he proposes.  Mia's dad, the Crown Prince of Genovia, is suffering from a midlife crisis and still hasn't gotten over Mia's mom, who was recently widowed.  (Gee, I wonder where this is going?)  Meanwhile, a shocking family secret threatens to shake the family to its core.  Or maybe introduce the main character for Cabot's new kid series.

Don't get me wrong, I still like Cabot's writing.  The pop culture references are fun - who doesn't love a book that mentions Sex Sent Me to the ER?  But I have been reading all the glowing reviews and thinking, what am I missing?  This book would have been a less-than-average addition to the original series.  And the cliched ending was a huge letdown.  I would have liked to see Mia grown more mature, intelligent and forging her own path, rather than the same tired old ending.  I guess when you're writing about princesses, you're not going to be breaking any feminist ground. 

Rating: 2.5 tiaras out of 5.

Passion

The title: Passion
The author: Louise Bagshawe
Publication:  Headline Publishing, 2009
Got it from:  The library

After reading so many heavy books for book club, I wanted something light and easy and page-turning.  This book appealed to me because its premise is based on Jane Austen's novel Persuasion.  When Melissa and Will were young, they were in love and wanted to get married.  But Melissa's father, an ambitious Oxford professor, convinced Melissa to break it off.  Heartbroken, Will goes into the army and gets recruited by MI6.  Almost twenty years later, Melissa is an academic with a rather dull life, and Will is a billionaire banker living in Manhatten.  When she becomes the target of a ruthless assassin, Will has to come back into her life to protect her.

I liked this novel quite a bit, and enjoyed it more than the average chick lit fare I've read.  I zipped through the 500 pages of this novel, wanting to see how Melissa and Will were going to escape some pretty harrowing situations.  Although I thought Will's meteoric rise to billionairedom was pretty far-fetched, I could see how the author needed to include it to make their escape from internationally trained killers believable.  I liked that Melissa isn't drop-dead gorgeous and that Will falls in love with her again because of her passion and determination.  The reason for Melissa being targeted (it has to do with her father's research) is kept somewhat vague, but that's obviously not the focus of the story.  This was definitely a fun diversion for a fall evening.

Midnight in Austenland

The title: Midnight in Austenland
The authors: Shannon Hale
Publication: Bloomsbury, 2012
Got it from: The library

So I did something I almost never do - diverged from my reading list to read the sequel to a book I've just read.  Midnight in Austenland follows a different character in the same place.   Charlotte Kinder is a divorced thirtysomething woman with two kids and a cheating ex-husband.  A successful Internet entrepreneur, she treats herself to a holiday in Austenland to indulge her love of Jane Austen.  But because she states on her questionnaire that she also loves Agatha Christie novels, she and the other actors in Austenland get involved trying to solve a murder mystery.  The problem is that Charlotte thinks the mystery may spill from make-believe into the real world...


I really enjoyed this sequel and read it in just a few days.  I liked Charlotte as a heroine more than Jane from the original novel, since she has a more can-do attitude and spends less time feeling sorry for herself, even when she had more to deal with in her home life.  I also liked that we're mislead as to who the hero of the novel really is - let's just say it will probably be less of a surprise to those of you familiar with Northanger Abbey, the Austen novel this book is based on.  We also get to meet with some of the characters from the first novel - Mrs. Wattlesbrook, Col. Andrews and Miss Charming, and learn more of their back stories.  Overall I have to say I liked this novel more because there was more action involved in solving the mystery.  If I have to be nitpicky, I did smack my forehead a number of times when the characters did some very silly things  (without giving too much away, if you suspect there's a murderer in a cottage, you wait for the police, not go rushing in yourself!)  I certainly hope we'll get to have more adventures in Austenland. 

Austenland

The title: Austenland
The authors: Shannon Hale
Publication: Bloomsbury, 2007
Got it from: Book Depot, 2009
 
This was going to be a different review.  On Sunday morning, when I was halfway through the book, I made a draft that was going to be another scathing critique of chick lit.  It was going to talk about how I couldn't understand these chick lit heroines, how boring they are, how they expect their Mr. Darcys yet do nothing to earn them.  But then something happened.  I started getting into it.  And now, having finished it, I am astonished to report that I actually enjoyed it.

After the fun of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, I was longing to read another British chick-lit book that would be light and fun and silly. Jane is a single thirtysomething woman dissatisfied with her love life.  She is given a chance to live out her Jane Austen fantasies when she is willed a holiday to "Austenland" by a dead relative.  People (read: women) go to Austenland to be heroines in Jane Austen's novels, while actors are hired to fill out the male roles.  Jane is expected to live completely Regency-style for three weeks.

My big problem with the book at first was the main character.  Here is a tidbit remaining from my original harsher review:

I despised the main character.  First of all, she is ashamed and embarrassed about her Jane Austen obsession, so much so that she hides her Austen movies in a plant.  But why?  Why would any woman be ashamed of it?  I don't understand.  If grown women can go around proudly admitting they read and enjoyed Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, why on earth would they be ashamed of enjoying an author who is considered one of the canon, the literary greats, history's finest?  Admitting you like Austen is like saying: I have brains and class.  Jane, don't you know all the cool women are doing it?

Then, as I said, things changed.  I'm still not sure I "get" some of Jane's actions.  But she did, in the end, prove to actually have a passion outside of her self-obsession, which was painting.  I wish the author had developed that aspect of her personality more, but I'm glad it was there.  I think the turning point for me was when Jane began to realize she may have genuine feelings for the actor hired to play the Mr. Darcy-like character.  She starts to question what is real and make-believe.  I loved the constant game of trying to figure out who is real, and who is false.  There is a great scene in the book when they all put on a play, and Jane and Mr. Nobley (the love interest) talk about whether actors can start to have real feelings outside of their plays, which naturally carries a double meaning inside the story we're reading. 

Oh, and I can't wait for the movie.  JJ Feild as Mr. Nobley?  Yes, please.

29: A Novel

The title: 29: A Novel
The authors: Adena Halpern
Publication: Touchstone, 2010
Got it from: The library


29 is the story of Ellie Jerome, a sweet 75-year-old lady who makes a wish on her birthday to be 29 for a day.  Ellie feels like she has a lot of regrets in her life, mainly involving being married to a much older man who cheated on her during their marriage.  She's jealous of the opportunities her twenty-something granddaughter has, and wants a second chance to see what it's like to be young and single.  She makes a wish on her birthday, and the next day she gets to revert back to her 29-year-old self.


The premise of this story sounded fun (and caught my eye because I'm currently 29), but overall I was disappointed.  It wasn't that it was light, because I was actually expecting a light, madcap Freaky Friday book, which would have been great.  But not a lot happens in the story.  It has has very little to say about the real advantages and disadvantages of being 75 vs. 29.  I wasn't expecting something profound, but all Ellie does with her new body is get a haircut, buy a new dress and talk about wanting to get a bikini wax.  You would think with her newfound energy and youth, she'd have done something a little more exciting.  She does have a fling with a guy she met that day, but that only comes at the end and it feels too late to really give the story sparkle.  


This on its own wouldn't have been enough to sink the book beyond hope, but the real problem was that the focus was only on Ellie for one half of the book.  Every other chapter described the adventures of Ellie's obnoxious daughter Barbara and doormat best friend Frieda, the kind of old lady who steals sugar from restaurants.  The two women spend the day trying to find Ellie, but their tedious adventures add little to the story.  They are supposed to be characters who experience growth thanks to Ellie's transformation (I think), but they felt like filler because the main story wasn't enough for a whole book.  And maybe that's my problem with the book - once you take out Barbara and Frieda's arguing and all kinds of stuff about fashion (Ellie's a fashion nut and her granddaughter is a designer), you really only have enough material here for a novella.  If I were assigning books letter grades, I'd give this one about a C.  It was okay, but I wouldn't recommend it. 

Enchanted, Inc.

The title: Enchanted, Inc.
The author: Shanna Swendson
Publication: Ballantine, 2005
Got it from: Amazon, 2009

I enjoyed this book so much that I immediately went out and downloaded the sequel onto my Kobo and read the two books back-to-back. There's actually two more in the series but I'll probably hold off on them for now. I know that I usually profess not to like chick lit, but this was a little bit different. For one, the main character, Katie Chandler, only rates about a 6/10 on the Mary Sue scale. For another, there's magic!

These books are pure escapist, cracktastic goodness. I found myself unable to put them down. Katie is an average New York career girl from small-town Texas with a boss from hell and a dead-end job. One day, out of the blue, she receives an email from a company that wants to recruit her. The hitch is that the company is actually called Magic, Spells and Illusion, and it produces spells for the magical community. Katie is special because she is an immune, meaning magic doesn't affect her. She is perfect as a company verifier, because she can see the hidden truth behind any magical manipulations. Like Harry Potter, she is soon whisked from a tortuous situation to a magical world. It's every working girl's fantasy.

Because this is chick lit and not romance, the romantic elements in the story have to share time with Katie's career and her friendships. That's not to say the romance is unimportant. Katie has a big-time crush on her co-worker Owen, who heads the Research and Development department and also happens to be an extremely powerful wizard who's incredibly shy and nervous. There's a lot of fun characters and scenes in the book, like her CEO being THE Merlin and riding magic carpets through the city. One particularly funny scene involves a girl's night out with her co-workers (some of whom are fairies) where they go to Central Park and kiss some frogs to disenchant them back to princes. There's also a big threat to the company in the form of a rogue ex-employee who's trying to sell some rather nasty spells, and naturally Katie is on the case.

If you enjoy immersing yourself in a fun world a la Harry Potter, with a cast of amusing characters, then Enchanted, Inc. may be just what the wizard ordered.

Little Miss Red

The title: Little Miss Red
The author: Robin Palmer
Publication: Speak, 2010
Got it from: The Library

High school student Sophie Greene is bored with her boyfriend of three years and wants to lead a more glamorous life, like the star of her favourite romance books, Devon Devoreaux, in this modern spin on the Little Red Riding Hood tale. On the plane to Grandma's house (a Florida condo, not a cabin in the woods) bringing family heirloom menorahs in place of the basket of goodies, she meets bad-boy Jack, a wannabe rock star motorcycle-riding kind of guy. But will Sophie give up her practical life in California for Jack's big bad wolf ways?

The problem with this book, as other reviewers have mentioned, is that Sophie is pretty shallow. Her naive views of what love should be could give Twilight's Bella a run for her money. In the end she of course realizes how self-absorbed and self-interested Jack is, but I didn't feel that Sophie herself was much better. Added to that, both Jack and Michael, Sophie's emo boyfriend, are pretty lame. Jack isn't a wolf so much as a mooching flirt and only a girl as airheaded as Sophie would fall for his act for even a second. Michael seems lazy and neglectful, and his claim to Sophie's love is that he's good at helping her pick out outfits. Sophie's tracksuit-wearing Grandma provided some amusement, as well as Sophie's references to the ultra-cheesy Devon Devoreaux novels. But overall this book doesn't rate much more than a middling "C".

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

The title: Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict
The author: Laurie Viera Rigler
Publication: Dutton, 2009
Got it from: The library

Back when I started this blog, I reviewed the book that came before this one, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. I gave that book a poor grade because I didn't care for the heroine. Luckily, I enjoyed this second outing much more.

In the first book, 21st century L.A. woman Courtney Stone time-travels back to Regency England in the body of one Jane Mansfield. In this book, Jane awakens in our time in Courtney's body. She gets to deal with all sorts of new and interesting things: hot showers, Facebook, TV, cars and Courtney's messed-up love life. I rather enjoy time-travel stories where people from the past get to see our world, rather than the other way around. Jane is a much more likable character than Courtney, and her Regency dialogue in modern-day L.A. is highly amusing. I zipped through this book in two days, anxiously hoping that Jane would get Courtney's love life sorted out.

*NEXT PARAGRAPH SOMEWHAT SPOILER-ISH*

My original complaint of neither Jane nor Courtney having interesting lives still holds, though I give points to Jane for having some backbone. My real complaint, however, is the ending. I really, really, REALLY* didn't like it. In my head, they returned to their own lives with the lessons they'd learned and applied it to their own times. Instead, we're left with ambiguity. What was the point of them switching and learning if they couldn't make it work in their own times? The ending just didn't work for me and left me with a sour feeling I'd have been better off without.

* I can't stress this enough.

6. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

The title: Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
The author: Laurie Viera Rigler
Publication: Dutton, 2007
Got it from: The library. I'm cheap.

First, let me get this off my chest straightaway, before I review this and possibly other chick lit books: I am not a chick lit fan. It's not because I look down on a genre aimed at the 20-something lady demographic, to which I clearly belong. Hell, you're looking at a woman who is happy-dance excited that she beat out a scillion other romance-reading Smart Bitches to be crowned with the SB title "Viscountess Wette t'Shirte", which I wish was my real name that I could use to sign cheques, and put the O-faced lady on my passport. "Oh I'm sorry, Viscountess, I didn't realize. Here, your daquiris are on the house." But I digress. Speaking of the SBs, they pretty much outline my reasons for why I think the genre stinks. It's a long article, but I'll put the best parts here:

"...what irritates the shit out of me is that these characters [the chick lit heroines], they let you look down on them. They exist to make you feel better about yourself. And not only that, things happen to them because they are “nice” or “good” or “kind” and they aren’t complete bitchasses, and so they earn their happily ever after, and maybe it’s with the rich executive guy who just got his MBA and a promotion by age 24, and all is right with the world because suddenly, Dippi McHeroine can afford a new cell phone, now that hers is in pieces on the street. Or Jemima J-heroine loses weight after seeing herself photoshopped into slender glory, and ends up with a hot job, a new sense of self-worth, and a hot, hot man she’s lusted for all along. Or maybe Frumpi L’Heroine figures out all by herself a way to deal with her annoying evil boss and her annoying evil stepmother and finds a modicum of personal happiness - and of course a guy figures into the story most of the time somehow. But isn’t this genre often inculcating among young women the idea that fulfillment isn’t to be had professionally? That true fulfillment is money, goods acquisition, and a hot, hunky man? How is that addressing the needs to the young, female workforce, except using common rhetoric to slide the idea into their heads that the workplace isn’t really where they want to be, and reinforcing old, dangerous standards of what modern femininity is?" [emphasis added]

"Most of all, Chick Lit also doesn’t do it for me because the heroines never do anything, aside from make big messes. Stuff happens to them. Then, when they happen to do something, it’s a catastrophe. They aren’t often autonomous and they don’t make decisions to better themselves after they’ve had a three-martini lunch with their shallow friends about how much things suck. That’s not inspiring, and it’s not interesting. It’s dumb and I get irritated with people like that in real life. I don’t care about shoes and handbags to the exclusion of your having a brain. And I surely do not care about this that or the other hot guy, and it’s not because I’m married. I have single friends, but they are not weight-obsessed slackasses who stick their heads up their asses then complain about the view. I can’t handle people like that with a great degree of patience. I’m not friends with them. They annoy me. And I hate spending my leisure time with them."

Tell me about it. The world is full of people who think women are nothing but man-obsessed, shoe-lovin', chocolate-eating, airheaded messes. And that's the nice version. The last thing I want to do is read about some dumbass heroine who just perpetuates that and with whom I have NOTHING in common. Heroines whose lives, both inner and outer, are so devoid of life I want to explode something, like publishing houses. Just last year, I read three chick lit novels (Jenny Cruisie's Tell Me Lies, MaryJanice Davidson's Undead and Unwed and Gemma Townley's When in Rome) whose heroine were so stupid, so lifeless and so annoying I would have ceremonially burned the books had not they belonged to the library. (Yes, yes. I know that Betsey from U and U is a vampire so she's literally dead. I meant inside, people!) For a woman like me, who grew up with the cream tea awesomeness of, say, Marion Zimmer Bradley's heroines, the ladies of chick lit seem like Cream of Crap.

As for the book in question...

I didn't hate it. Which, considering the above views on chick lit, is saying a lot. Nor did I love it, even though my husband insists because it involves Jane Austen AND time travel it was written for me. The heroine of this book, Courtney Stone, is a rather frustrating embodiment of the chick lit genre, but she does get a little more interesting as the book progresses. The story basically involves her waking up in the body of Jane, a 19th century woman from the same genteel class of Austen's heroines. It's glaringly obvious that this book is a wish fulfillment for the author, who not only looks exactly like the heroine (based on her jacket picture) but also leads a similar life. Hey, we've all had our Mary Sue moments, but I wish the similarities hadn't been quite so close.

Courtney/Jane does have her moments, like when she ponders the time/space continuum and has her "OMG I really am selfish!" revelation at the end, but most of the time she's Dumb Chick Lit girl: "I'm so ashamed of my Jane Austen addiction because it's not cool!" "I drink vodka to escape the reality that my ex-fiance was a chick lit a-hole caricature!" "I'm going to stalk Jane Austen when I see her on the street!" The pièce de résistance comes very close to the end, when she completely lost all credibility with me and I pushed back all the ground she gained. I can't tell you what it is, but if you read the book you'll know it when you read it. Suffice to say, her stupidity reared its ugly head in a very disappointing way.

And the payoff? Very disappointing. You're not even sure who the hero's supposed to be until 3/4 through the book, and the ending is confusing and rushed.

The reason I'm not totally trashing this book? Because it's the Regency. Sigh. I'm such a sucker. And because Jane/Courtney has a great friend in it named Mary, who reminds me of my own friend Mary. It's a slim save, but it's something. At least it only took a few hours to read. B-