The kids have been doing plenty of reading lately, and we are all enjoying John D. Fitzgerald's The Great Brain as our nightly read aloud, but today I'm going to write about two adult books I've just finished. Somehow, when I type "adult book" it sounds funny to my ear, as if I'm writing about a smutty book purchased at an "adult bookstore." These two certainly aren't smut, but they aren't for kids either.
I recently finished Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle. I picked it up on the recommendation of my sister-in-law. Lucky for me, I take her book suggestions (and all others, of course) quite seriously. I loved this book. It was very different from anything I had ever read. Or maybe it was more like a number of very diverse things I've read beautifully woven together. The narrator is a bitter and acerbic pornographer who gets in a car accident while drunk and high. While in a burn ward being treated for horrible burns all over his body, a woman named Marianne Engel arrives from the psych ward claiming to have known him ever since she treated him for burns when she was a nun in Germany seven hundred years earlier. It is a story within a story book which combines mysticism, mystery, and romance. It is one of those books you stay up late reading even though you are tired and ought to get some sleep.
The other book I completed this weekend was Elizabeth Buchan's Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman about a 48 year old London book editor who loses her husband and her job to her assistant. I think it is the sub genre of chick lit known as "life after wife." I know I plucked it from the library shelves based entirely on its title. I did just celebrate a birthday and am very aware of my middle aged status. While it's not deep, thought provoking literature, The Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman is certainly a satisfying read.
Enough about me, what have you read lately?
2 comments:
The middle-age revenge book sounds good, sort of like a lighter "All About Eve." I just finished the "Amateur Marriage" and it was okay-ish . . . better at the beginning than at the end, although the character development was terrific.
I just finished J. D. Ward's "Dark Lover", and I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the series. I just turned 40 this year, and boy, am I feeling it. :) Snow on White Mountains was the first 'after wife' book I'd ever read and I loved it.
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