25. Caught in the Act - Gemma Fox

This is a fluffy pink book that caught my eye when I was picking up books for bookclub. Fluffy material wise, literally pink on the outside. And I am occasionally helpless when confronted with something that promises to be fluffy. Especially when it is pink.

The book was a lot more interesting than I initially thought it would be and was actually a bit of a twist on the usual girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, there are complications, Happy Ending. Not much of a twist but a bit of one.

And this is the second book in the last little while to feature a man who is utterly charming and utterly an asshole. Again I found myself pleading with the main character not to fall for it. I know it is just coincidence, but I am starting to wonder if the universe isn't trying to tell me something. If so, message received loud and clear, I have officially given up on any sort of love life in the forseeable future, asshole or no. I have too many personal things to figure out - one of them being why I consistently get sucked in by the charming assholes.

So I guess nothing too indepth about this one (that's not really new is it) ... it features a little bit of England and a little bit of Shakespeare and a little bit of "growing up" and finding your place in the world.

24. American Gods - Neil Gaiman (Book Club)

Ugh. Life is quickly getting away from me and I keep putting off posting until there is a bit of a quiet moment but the books I have read are starting to pile up again. And really as I think about my goal of reading 50 new books by the end of January and I only have 4 months left. Which means I have to pick up the pace a bit. And it shouldn't be that tough of a goal to reach because 50 books in 12 months is only just over 4 books a month. I remember when I used to read 4 books a week. But I think that maybe I didn't really do anything else and now I have 2 daytimers, a wall calendar and a computer reminder so that I don't forget something important. Basically the point is that this shouldn't be an impossible task but it is harder than I anticipated.

Ok. So American God's which was Jago's book club pick for September. And ... I don't really know what to say. The book made you think about religion and mythology and iconography and what people used to worship vs what we (apparently) worship/place importance on today. I was a little bit frustrated because the gods that were referenced weren't really ones that were part of my mythology background - I have a fairly decent base of knowledge for Greek & Roman gods and there are names I recognize from other cultures but for the most part Gaiman was referencing gods that I had minimal familiarity with. Which I think only served to emphasize some of his points about how the "older" gods are being forgotten as we turn to worship technology and media etc. And I can't comfortably say that he is wrong, although I am not sure I 100% agree either.

The book is definitely more plot driven than character driven and other members of my book club found the book hard to get through because they didn't care about the characters. I tend to prefer plot driven novels, but I do agree that a connection with at least ONE of the characters is important as well. I didn't find the lack of "likeable" characters to be a problem, mostly because I was too busy trying to follow the various storylines and figure out the symbolism and put the pieces of the plot together to notice how I felt about the characters as individuals. And maybe it is something that would bother me on subsequent readings. I definitely think this book would lend itself well to a re-read because I was so busy trying to figure out the big picture that I feel like maybe I lost some of the finer points. And maybe it would help if I boned up on my mythology a little more.

23. Quentins - Maeve Binchy

Whenever my friends told me about Maeve Binchy and how much they thought I would like her books this is the one they most frequently mentioned as a must read. So I finally did. 3 years later. I'm not sure that I loved it as much as they thought I would but that might be a case of too much hype making the book seem larger than life before I read it. Anyways. It was worth the read and I think I picked it up for $5 bucks and it was more than worth that.

Part of the reason I think my friends wanted me to read Quentin's is because the "heroine", Ella, falls for a guy who is pretty much the stereotypical type of guy that I fall for. On the surface he is charming and likeable and has everything going for him but really, secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) he is a more of an asshole than not and a user and a cheater. And I, like Ella, fall for the charms and overlook the little missteps and defend him to others and spend hours upon hours convincing myself that it's not really as bad as other people think, they just don't know him, they don't know how I feel. And in the end it is always a load of crap and I should have learned my lessons by now and maybe this time I have. Anyways, I am sure my friends occasionally feel towards me the way I felt towards Ella. All, "you poor sweet innocent and mostly dumb thing. Can't you see he is playing you for a fool. Oh god. Do not trust him." Of course none of the guys I have liked have stolen money from my family and friends and then fled the country.

Ha.

It is so much easier to see where other people should make different choices.

And inevitably there was a happy ending with everyone happily in love and the bad boyfriend in jail and Ella having learned not to trust the charm with only one go at it. Fairytale characters never make the same mistake twice.