Call me old fashioned...

...but I think I'm old enough now to know what I like and what I don't.
Or rather, what I can tolerate and what I simply can't be arsed to any longer.  And I think I've reached that stage in my life where I'm absolutely allowed to say 'enough', 'move on', 'life's too short' and all that jazz.
Okay, let's get to the point.

My last book came through from the lovely Transworld people when we got back from Italy last week and, dutifully, excitedly, even, I got stuck in straight away.  But I don't like it.  It's full of rich people who run casinos in Las Vegas and who are clearly harbouring ill-gotten secrets that I already am not the slightest bit interested in finding out about.  And there's chicks, airheady bimbos, gangster bouncer-types, babes and stud-muffins - in fact all manner of alien life form (not literally, there's no proper green people prior to page 40) that I just can't  - dare I say 'won't'? - connect with.

Not since my Jilly Cooper heyday with all the horses and the 'gosh'es and the mummy's darlings dripping with education and million-carat mansions have I ever felt less connected to my main characters.  But back then I read them because I didn't 'get' the big deal with horses (my friends rode all the time and I thought I must be missing out on something) and thought the answer may have lain between Ms Cooper's lines.  The sex scenes were pretty cool too, of course.  In lieu of my mother ever telling me what went where, I learnt pretty much what I needed to do when faced with a straw bale, a pure-bred gelding and guy in jodhpurs wielding a whip.

Of course this knowledge would have come in handy had the only horse I ever came into real contact with, not sprayed snot all over my forehead before standing painfully on my foot and putting me off anything to do with stables for the rest of my life.

Some would call it Karma, I call it a lucky escape.

If anyone has a hankering for a gold-plated read, then let me know and the book is theirs.  I don't like to see words go to waste and it's not the authors' fault that I'm not impressed.  If she'd set the exact same story at the head office at Asda I might be more inclined for forge through.
But forging's too much effort, no?

So onto the next book.

Romantic Hero or Funny TV Guy?

Which my lovely niece lent me after she'd finished reading it in Italy.  And... well... call me old fashioned.... intolerant... whatever (go on - I can take anything at my age!) the minute I'd read this in the acknowledgements, I was already slightly irritated before I'd even started...

"...thanks to ***  for your help and enthusiasm, which were much appreciated..."

Is that right?  "were".  I read it once, I read it twice... I read it backwards, I shut my eyes and re-read it.  I even shouted it aloud to the Girl who was in the next room and she shouted back "eeeee-wwww!" so I knew it wasn't just me.

And even though I gave it a fair shot, the whole style of the writing annoyed me to inner screaming levels.  There was a "for" in almost every sentence e.g.  "the air was chilly, for the sun had since waned"  and "she had moved south, for there was no work in York..."  stuff like that.  And normally I'm all for conjunctives... but not the same bleedin' one every time.... per-lease.
And then six characters were introduced in two paragraphs.
Pass me the smelling salts somebody, it's only page 7!
I knew the Right Time had come when I read/re-read/lol'd at this:

..."She had missed him and Lotte a lot, though..."

Lotte... a lot...?  Weren't there any more words in the writer's toolkit than the one that sounded the same as the character's name? does the synonym icon not work south of the border?

And I just couldn't get over the fact that David Mitchell (of Mitchell and Webb/Peep Show - him up there) was actually a character in this either.  Apparently he'd bid at a charity auction to appear as a character in this book.  A wholly admirable thing to do, of course and generally I'm very happy and a bit swoony when he's being all clever and funny on TV.  But as a character in a book, he's not exactly the brooding, swarthy hero I have in my head for moments such as these and I couldn't concentrate properly.

Somebody please tell me it's not just me? Oh, and the Girl.  Maybe it's our Genes.  Do we need ones with slightly more 'give' in them?

Book Review: "Second Hand Heart" by Catherine Ryan Hyde

3rd book in the Transworld Summer Reading Challenge

There's something about a book cover with grass on that makes me feel happy. And having already read one book by Catherine Ryan Hyde - "Chasing Windmills", which both the Girl and I loved, I was looking forward to reading this, her latest, and it didn't disappoint.
Vida is 19 and has been about to die ever since she was born with a defective heart. Luckily for Vida, a suitable donor is found in the (heart-)shape of Lorrie who is killed in a tragic accident, leaving a shocked and grief-striken husband, Robert.
And even though I found this *tiny but infinitely important* detail a little unbelievable, the first time Robert sees Vida, she tells him she loves him.  As their individual journeys of self-discovery unfold, however, we see that this is no ordinary love - this is quite simply, (and scientifically) "from the heart". 
I was prepared for schmaltz and rather too much sentimentality and I got neither.  This was beautifully told, cleverly interwoven and I couldn't have been more delighted if it had proper, living grass on the cover.   It makes you think more deeply about the imprints we are unaware of making on the lives we lead, and more interestingly, of the impressions we are creating within our individual genetic make-up. A fascinating premise and a lovely book.  Highly recommended.

“PREP” by Curtis Sittenfeld

So I finished this last night. And regular readers will know that I wasn’t exactly enjoying it. In fact if it hadn’t been a stipulation of the Transworld Summer Reading Challenge Rules that you have to read and review each book before you’re sent another, then I’d have flung this onto my pile of book ‘orphans’ days ago and read something more enjoyable instead.
I didn’t entirely connect with the MC. I found her a bit self-obsessed (which I guess can be forgiven at the ages of 15-17) but because the story’s being told in hindsight by the adult protagonist, I found so many passages so mind-numbingly over-analytical that towards the end I was skipping huge chunks (but don’t tell the Transworld people, ok?). I DO remember having all of those awkward, stumbling, ungainly feelings of self-consciousness at this age, but I didn’t really enjoy the way they were over-explained from the grown-up viewpoint.
As I said in an earlier post, the number of student names that kept being hurled at me, I had a hard time keeping up with (and then it turned out that although you were told what they’d had for breakfast for the past three years, they only passed the MC once in the corridor and didn’t figure any more in the story – hence the chunk-skipping).
I identified with a lot of the situations (the awkwardness of the parents’ visit, for instance and the sexual awakenings) but the whole thing was over-told. Some sentences I had to keep reading over and over because they were so long - one even amounted to 7.5 lines long – exhausted with commas and semi-colons, so that by the time I’d gotten to the end of the sentence I’d forgotten how it’d started.
I’d definitely watch it if was ever a film, because it’d be easier on the eye.


Now I'm giving myself a well-earned break and I'm going to start 'Avalon High' by Meg Cabot 'cos I'm missing The Girl and she told me this is one of her all-time favourites before she left for the Big Apple... *blub*

"Matters of the Heart" by Danielle Steel

(First book in the Transworld 'Summer Reading Challenge')
Having never read a book by Danielle Steel in my life, I can honestly say I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up “Matters of the Heart”. At the back of my mind I had the impression (although I have no idea where from) that she might be a bit too ‘old school/twee’ for me. After all, she’s been around for decades and this is her 100th book! (Including unpublished and non-fiction).
So, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself a quarter of the way through Matters of the Heart and thoroughly enjoying it. Main character, world-famously respected photographer, Hope was believable in personality with quite a tragic history. And even though I know that if I had $50million I sure as hell wouldn’t still be doing any kind of ‘paid’ work, I still really liked her and was rooting for her right from the off.
Hope meets the charming and equally world-renowned author Finn O’Neill through her work and at first it seems that they’re two kindred spirits destined to be together and in love forever. But nothing is ever that easy and soon we get hints at how the whole perfect scenario is about to unravel before our eyes.
I did find myself skipping paragraphs and the writer in me was wincing slightly as some facts were repeated over and over as if I needed a bit of hand-holding, but the overall story was told simply and skilfully, with no unnecessary elaboration (apart from the repetition) (apart from the repetition). In fact some of the scenes were so gripping I almost read them through my fingers.
A thoroughly good read and a book I’d definitely recommend.