I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover (then why do they try so hard to make them pretty, I ask you?!), but since shopping is in my blood, I instantly gravitated towards Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic. Then leaped for joy when I learned it was a series. And even more when I learned the series would continue (this discovery was many years back so *sigh* Mini Shopaholic is the final book in the series. I did tweet Kinsella begging for a Shopaholic Takes Hollywood but have yet to hear back. Fingers crossed!)
So then I guess I don't need to tell you, I love these books. But more so, I love Sophie Kinsella. A British charmer with a quick wit and the vital talent of putting said wit to paper and have it properly translate. One of my goodreads friends gave her a bad review and I was offended! Her books are laugh-out-loud funny, endearing, intelligent, dramatic, fun, and completely worth the effort (unlike Outlander but don't even get me started on that hot mess).
We pick up shortly where Shopaholic and Sister leaves off, with Luke and Becky Brandon living with her parents while they try to find a suitable home for them and Minnie, their precocious two-year old. I'd say spoiled, but Becky's parenting skills aren't what's being reviewed, here...
In the midst of deal after deal falling through, for one unimaginable reason or another, a national financial crisis leaves Becky feeling like the fate of the economy is on her shoulders when she's probably the only one supporting it. While laughing at the ridiculousness that is her and her life, you can't help but like her, feel like she was the best friend you never had, understand the euphoric ecstasy that comes with shopping, and might even be compelled to do a little shopping yourself. She is assertive and stands up for herself, while also reminding us readers why it pays to be nice to everyone all the time no matter what.
No, the subject matter doesn't make you squirm for the sake of art; the climax of the story was Becky spending an obscene amount of money when the entire series was based on one question: will Becky finally get her financial life under control? The answer: no! And that's ok because we love Becky and everything about her. And no one can say she didn't help the economy.
Any of Kinsella's Shopaholic series - or The Undomestic Goddess, Can You Keep A Secret?, Twenties Girl, Remember Me?, or any of the litany of books she has published - is worth a haul in your tote, but it probably won't be there for long. I blew through these books because they're fun, funny, and surprisingly down to earth. Kinsella - as usual - gives us a sparkly, designer life-raft to survive the dark, deep ocean that is made up of the critically-acclaimed uber-dramas. I hope Kinsella never stops writing.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Fifty Shades Darker
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that avid readers of the Fifty Shades trilogy are well-versed in Sex and the City, up to and including both movies (sorry, the quality of the second is a discussion for another time). The series ended with a nice little wrap-up of everyone's feelings in just the way you expected them that it was difficult for devoted fans to predict where the movie would pick up and eventually take us. The end of Fifty Shades of Grey was considerably the opposite, ending on heartbreak, sadness, loneliness, and extreme confusion, leaving devoted fans how the story could possibly continue given Christian's "fifty shades of fucked up." But where Carrie explores what happens after "happily ever after" in Sex and the City: The Movie, Anastasia Steele explores what happens when you change the unchangeables and actually get exactly what you want.
Let's face it: there's a bit of Anastasia in all of us, especially as we embark on finding and cultivating adult relationships. Virgin in every sense of the word, Ana, gets back together with Christian Grey faster than us women-of-the-world would, but probably a lot slower than most of us in our early 20s. Loving all of his "fifty shades of fucked-up-ness," she finds herself easily manipulated by Grey and his, what I at 31 years old deem, obsessive and controlling behavior. She finds it cute. And in the beginning it is. But what was tawdry and risque in Fifty Shades of Grey, is sticky, saccharine, and disgustingly sweet in Fifty Shades Darker. I mean, SPOILER ALERT they don't get to the real kinky stuff until the second to last chapter! Otherwise, there is a lot of "vanilla sex," and "making love." The declarations of love are enough to actually glue my eyeballs to the ceiling as my grandmother had always warned. By 100 pages in, I was giggling at the sheer absurdity of it instead of any sexual explicitness . It did make me seriously consider how my husband and I could go from bitterly arguing to making out and ripping each others close off in a matter of seconds, though. *That* is something out of the book I'd like to try.
Like we are all Anastasia to some degree, we all know a Christian Grey; someone of the emotionally unavailable variety. And while this book encompasses fairy tales old and new - including the name Anastasia, who, coincidentally, decides to keep her long, flowing hair - it explores the ultimate fantasy: what happens when we get exactly what we want from our partner?
Christian is willing to give Ana everything she ever wanted if she just stays with him, moves in with him, and SPOILER ALERT agrees to marry him all within a span of a week after getting back together with him from breaking up because of his pain fetish. It was hard to believe the span of time collectively between the two novels was approximately six weeks, and that's being generous (and don't even get my friend, Mer, started on how Christian is only 27-years old. And don't even get *me* started on how a girl with zero sexual or relationship experience has multiple, mind-blowing orgasms. That alone should classify it as Science Fiction/Fantasy.). Naturally, though, if Ana got everything she wanted without any drawbacks, us housewives would have thrown the book down with disgust. Apart from getting the sex she wanted, getting everything else didn't come without it's drama, which - let's face it - we appreciate. Would we be one of Grey's crazy exes who didn't understand why she wasn't The One to Fix Grey? Possibly. He's rather difficult to deal with and I'd want some sort of retribution for being with him, especially if I was one of the few who did caning.
Written to suck you in, sentences usually no longer than a handful of words, E.L. James had one purpose: to lay it all out there. I remember her giggling through a Today Show interview, shrugging and saying she just wrote down every fantasy she's ever had whenever she had a spare moment, even if that meant on her iPhone. As luck would have it for her (ok, and us), they ended up being some variation of all of our fantasies. After all, none of us have actually changed anyone, especially someone with a strong, unorthodox compulsion that requires professional psychiatric help. And where leaving our respective non-changers would have worked for two weeks maximum, Grey seems to be instantly cured. Sorry, still laughing...
While James claims these books have no deeper meaning, I can't help but think the study of these in some sort of sociological, psychological, or even anthropological setting would be interesting.
It was definitely what the Romance genre boasts a "page-turner," but the obsession with the book series is beyond my comprehension. While I'm not attracted to series in general, those of only three books usually leave me panting for the third (Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Not this time. Darker sort-of ends with a cliffhanger, something James threw down at the end to leave the door open for more sexually charged mischief. My friend, Mer, said she thought Fifty Shades Freed was a waste of time and paper and that the story could have ended with the second book. Me, I have no looming desire to pick up the third book, if only for the reason I picked up the second: something easy and mindless to read after a summer spent reading memoirs (I realize that sounds book-snob-ish). But if I never know how the story ends, I'll be able to live with my bookish self. The only real draw to me finishing the series is so I get all of the Fifty Shades of Grey-inspired e-cards.
Let's face it: there's a bit of Anastasia in all of us, especially as we embark on finding and cultivating adult relationships. Virgin in every sense of the word, Ana, gets back together with Christian Grey faster than us women-of-the-world would, but probably a lot slower than most of us in our early 20s. Loving all of his "fifty shades of fucked-up-ness," she finds herself easily manipulated by Grey and his, what I at 31 years old deem, obsessive and controlling behavior. She finds it cute. And in the beginning it is. But what was tawdry and risque in Fifty Shades of Grey, is sticky, saccharine, and disgustingly sweet in Fifty Shades Darker. I mean, SPOILER ALERT they don't get to the real kinky stuff until the second to last chapter! Otherwise, there is a lot of "vanilla sex," and "making love." The declarations of love are enough to actually glue my eyeballs to the ceiling as my grandmother had always warned. By 100 pages in, I was giggling at the sheer absurdity of it instead of any sexual explicitness . It did make me seriously consider how my husband and I could go from bitterly arguing to making out and ripping each others close off in a matter of seconds, though. *That* is something out of the book I'd like to try.
Like we are all Anastasia to some degree, we all know a Christian Grey; someone of the emotionally unavailable variety. And while this book encompasses fairy tales old and new - including the name Anastasia, who, coincidentally, decides to keep her long, flowing hair - it explores the ultimate fantasy: what happens when we get exactly what we want from our partner?
Christian is willing to give Ana everything she ever wanted if she just stays with him, moves in with him, and SPOILER ALERT agrees to marry him all within a span of a week after getting back together with him from breaking up because of his pain fetish. It was hard to believe the span of time collectively between the two novels was approximately six weeks, and that's being generous (and don't even get my friend, Mer, started on how Christian is only 27-years old. And don't even get *me* started on how a girl with zero sexual or relationship experience has multiple, mind-blowing orgasms. That alone should classify it as Science Fiction/Fantasy.). Naturally, though, if Ana got everything she wanted without any drawbacks, us housewives would have thrown the book down with disgust. Apart from getting the sex she wanted, getting everything else didn't come without it's drama, which - let's face it - we appreciate. Would we be one of Grey's crazy exes who didn't understand why she wasn't The One to Fix Grey? Possibly. He's rather difficult to deal with and I'd want some sort of retribution for being with him, especially if I was one of the few who did caning.
Written to suck you in, sentences usually no longer than a handful of words, E.L. James had one purpose: to lay it all out there. I remember her giggling through a Today Show interview, shrugging and saying she just wrote down every fantasy she's ever had whenever she had a spare moment, even if that meant on her iPhone. As luck would have it for her (ok, and us), they ended up being some variation of all of our fantasies. After all, none of us have actually changed anyone, especially someone with a strong, unorthodox compulsion that requires professional psychiatric help. And where leaving our respective non-changers would have worked for two weeks maximum, Grey seems to be instantly cured. Sorry, still laughing...
While James claims these books have no deeper meaning, I can't help but think the study of these in some sort of sociological, psychological, or even anthropological setting would be interesting.
It was definitely what the Romance genre boasts a "page-turner," but the obsession with the book series is beyond my comprehension. While I'm not attracted to series in general, those of only three books usually leave me panting for the third (Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Not this time. Darker sort-of ends with a cliffhanger, something James threw down at the end to leave the door open for more sexually charged mischief. My friend, Mer, said she thought Fifty Shades Freed was a waste of time and paper and that the story could have ended with the second book. Me, I have no looming desire to pick up the third book, if only for the reason I picked up the second: something easy and mindless to read after a summer spent reading memoirs (I realize that sounds book-snob-ish). But if I never know how the story ends, I'll be able to live with my bookish self. The only real draw to me finishing the series is so I get all of the Fifty Shades of Grey-inspired e-cards.
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