Recent Reads!
My recent reads are behind the cut.
I’ll go backwards from what I just finished:
Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding
Holy carp, I did not know Fielding could write so well! She wrote this novel in 1994, two years before Bridget Jones hit the scene. I was never too fond of the first Bridget book, but I did enjoy the second one and also loved the first movie. I picked up this novel because I was intrigued by the premise.
Rosie Richardson, disillusioned by her London life as the girlfriend of an (asshole) celebrity moves to Africa to work in a refugee camp. Most of the book alternates between her past in London and the present in Africa. Eventually the two disparate cultures come together when Rosie, in a last ditch effort to help the starving refugees, gets together her old celebrity chums for a benefit show.
The novel is both hilarious and incredibly moving, and Rosie is a layered, self-aware, strong character. Bridget would not last two days in Rosie’s shoes.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Yet another classic I missed as a child. Incredible. I can’t wait to read it with my kids one day.
Milo is a very bored little boy who comes home one day to find a tollbooth in his bedroom. He rides through it in his toy car to a world turned upside down by the loss of two princesses, Rhyme & Reason. Wordplay and puns abound. The characters are fantastic, especially Milo and the literal watchdog Tock, and the illustrations are beautiful but not too detailed, leaving much to the imagination of the young reader.
Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman (play)
This is a really cool play: it’s a retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (mythology). It would be a technical nightmare to produce because there is a pool onstage, but it would be so, so cool to do. (I think my alma mater’s arena/thrust space would work beautifully.) The summer after I graduated high school, I was in a different version of Metamorphoses, so it was cool reading different interpretations of the stories as well as reminiscing about the production I was in.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
This is one of my all time favorite books. Originally published in the 1940s, it is the story (told in diary form) of Rose, a young girl living in pre-WWII England, in an old castle with her eccentric family. The family includes: an older sister desperate to get married, a father who is a washed-up writer (who allegedly tried to stab his previous wife with a cake knife), a young communing-with-nature stepmother named Topaz, and a shy young farmhand who has a crush on Rose. A pair of American brothers become their landlords, and romantic entanglements and hilarity quickly ensue. The storytelling and style is very Austen-esque, albeit a bit more accessible to the modern reader. This was just as wonderful a re-read as the first time.
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
How you say…bleughhhhhhhhh. This is a horribly written memoir by a woman who grew up in Communist China. Apparently it took her seven years to write the manuscript because English is her second language, but dear lawd, HIRE AN EDITOR and/or HIRE SOMEONE WITH A COMMAND OF THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE TRYING TO WRITE IN TO HELP YOU. This was for book club.
The story is as such: young girl goes to work in the work camps, does some lesbian-y things, gets a job as an actress for the government, hangs out in a house full of other actresses competing for the lead role in the film Red Azalea (I was hoping for an America’s Next Top Model type of competition, but alas, no), falls in love with some feminine dude named The Supervisor (who I TOTALLY thought was a woman in drag but unfortunately, again, no), eventually moves to America and writes this crap book. The End.
posted by junipar
I’ll go backwards from what I just finished:
Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding
Holy carp, I did not know Fielding could write so well! She wrote this novel in 1994, two years before Bridget Jones hit the scene. I was never too fond of the first Bridget book, but I did enjoy the second one and also loved the first movie. I picked up this novel because I was intrigued by the premise.
Rosie Richardson, disillusioned by her London life as the girlfriend of an (asshole) celebrity moves to Africa to work in a refugee camp. Most of the book alternates between her past in London and the present in Africa. Eventually the two disparate cultures come together when Rosie, in a last ditch effort to help the starving refugees, gets together her old celebrity chums for a benefit show.
The novel is both hilarious and incredibly moving, and Rosie is a layered, self-aware, strong character. Bridget would not last two days in Rosie’s shoes.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Yet another classic I missed as a child. Incredible. I can’t wait to read it with my kids one day.
Milo is a very bored little boy who comes home one day to find a tollbooth in his bedroom. He rides through it in his toy car to a world turned upside down by the loss of two princesses, Rhyme & Reason. Wordplay and puns abound. The characters are fantastic, especially Milo and the literal watchdog Tock, and the illustrations are beautiful but not too detailed, leaving much to the imagination of the young reader.
Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman (play)
This is a really cool play: it’s a retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (mythology). It would be a technical nightmare to produce because there is a pool onstage, but it would be so, so cool to do. (I think my alma mater’s arena/thrust space would work beautifully.) The summer after I graduated high school, I was in a different version of Metamorphoses, so it was cool reading different interpretations of the stories as well as reminiscing about the production I was in.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
This is one of my all time favorite books. Originally published in the 1940s, it is the story (told in diary form) of Rose, a young girl living in pre-WWII England, in an old castle with her eccentric family. The family includes: an older sister desperate to get married, a father who is a washed-up writer (who allegedly tried to stab his previous wife with a cake knife), a young communing-with-nature stepmother named Topaz, and a shy young farmhand who has a crush on Rose. A pair of American brothers become their landlords, and romantic entanglements and hilarity quickly ensue. The storytelling and style is very Austen-esque, albeit a bit more accessible to the modern reader. This was just as wonderful a re-read as the first time.
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
How you say…bleughhhhhhhhh. This is a horribly written memoir by a woman who grew up in Communist China. Apparently it took her seven years to write the manuscript because English is her second language, but dear lawd, HIRE AN EDITOR and/or HIRE SOMEONE WITH A COMMAND OF THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE TRYING TO WRITE IN TO HELP YOU. This was for book club.
The story is as such: young girl goes to work in the work camps, does some lesbian-y things, gets a job as an actress for the government, hangs out in a house full of other actresses competing for the lead role in the film Red Azalea (I was hoping for an America’s Next Top Model type of competition, but alas, no), falls in love with some feminine dude named The Supervisor (who I TOTALLY thought was a woman in drag but unfortunately, again, no), eventually moves to America and writes this crap book. The End.
posted by junipar