Saturday, May 30, 2009

My new reading selections...

Yesterday I recieved a gift card to Barnes & Noble and I immediately ran out to spend it. I mean, I have two long train rides ahead of me, of COURSE I can spend it now, thanks!!

Here is what I got...

Hot & Bothered: A Novel by Annie Downey
From BooklistThe chirpy heroine in Downey's debut is surprised to find herself at a crossroads when, at age 39, her husband ("Ex-Rat") leaves her with two children and an identity crisis, presumably to join Sex Addicts Anonymous and gallivant around with a new girlfriend. Saddled with a sassy best friend, a flaky mother, and a gigantic crush on a charming professor ("Perfect Guy"), she thinks that it's a miracle when she finds time for herself. She tries meditation, she tries a part-time job, she even tries shopping for sexy lingerie, all while parenting and hosting holiday dinners. Told in flashes, Bridget Jones-style, the short, page-length snippets, with titles like "A Manic Moment" and "Cheese Danish," give the sense that the author, like her main character, is always on the run. Still, Downey pulls off the fast pace, and readers will root for this single mom to find her prince, however unconventional the pursuit may be. Will she end up with Perfect Guy? Ex-Rat? Rugged Alaskan Man? Now that she is thriving, who cares? Delightful. Emily CookCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Mating Rituals of the North American WASP by Lauren Lipton
From Publishers Weekly: Lipton's second effort (after It's About Your Husband) is a feast of standard genre fare redeemed by the author's wit. After a night of partying in Vegas, Peggy Adams wakes up married to a stranger. Her new husband is Luke Sedgwick, scion of an old Connecticut family who manages the dwindling family fortune and cares for his elderly aunt Abigail in the crumbling ancestral manse. When Peggy arrives in Connecticut to sign the annulment papers, Abigail intervenes, unwilling to let the last living Sedgwick get divorced on her watch. She poses a deal: if they stay married for a year, Abigail will allow them to sell the Sedgwick estate and split the proceeds. Since Peggy needs a windfall to save her faltering business and Luke wants to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, they agree, but married life brings plenty of familiar obstacles and a foregone romantic conclusion. Lipton's skewering of WASPy culture is reliably entertaining, and her perfectly mismatched leads are sturdier than most. It won't change your life, but it'll help kill a couple hours at the beach. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Something Blue by Emily Giffin
From Publishers WeeklyGiffin's sophomore effort-which tells the story that her bestselling Something Borrowed did from a different character's point of view-stars such an unsympathetic narrator that it's a little like reading a Cinderella story featuring one of the wicked stepsisters. Perhaps beautiful Darcy Rhone isn't really wicked, but she is one of the most shallow, materialistic, self-centered and naïve 29-year-olds around. Ostensibly a high-powered PR person in Manhattan (though she never seems to work), Darcy spends most of her time shopping, partying and getting ready for her wedding to perfect guy Dex. But an alcohol-fueled Hamptons fling with one of Dex's pals, Marcus, starts to break Darcy's perfect life down; and discovering Dex hiding in her best friend Rachel's closet really shatters it. Pregnant with Marcus's baby, Darcy decamps for London, where she crashes in high school pal Ethan's flat and annoys the heck out of him with her endless shopping and complete disregard for her impending motherhood. But after a good lecture from Ethan, whom Darcy has started to fall for a little, Darcy embarks on a self-improvement plan, thereby demonstrating she can think about someone besides herself. And if readers don't mind the first 200 pages in which she doesn't, they'll enjoy her happy ending and the few surprises along the way. Fans of Something Borrowed, too, may relish the "she said, she said" fun. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
I am taking the Mating book and Emily Giffin's book with me to Chicago. I haven't read the first book Something borrowed, but I think that will be fine...
Off till Wednesday!!

1 comment:

Ashley said...

Hope you had a fun time in Chicago! I was interested to know what you thought of the books you read. A few weeks ago I picked up the Emily Griffin book - Love the One Your With - and really enjoyed it! I was wondering if her others are as good.