Rereading Hypocrite in Love
Nov. 4th, 2005 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maribou(note: reviewer is home sick today, and thus admits to no fault in the case of hopeless digressive tendencies and lack of editing.)
Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, by Susan Ann Gilman
I read this last month, but left it out of previous posts. Oops. Anyway. I bought this book to give to my sister for her plane trip to Thailand, as she had specifically requested some light reading. After 3 pages, I realized my sister would hate this book, due to the author's style, not content. She writes the kind of sentences where one thing gets heaped on after another after another, creating an avalance of specifics that then tumble into your lap like a puppy who really really really wants you to like her. (hee, hee, I love mixing my metaphors like that.) My sister has little patience for this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, find it maximally endearing when done well. So I loved this book. Also pleasing because very very few of the autobiographical essays within have anything to do with men, and the few that do are really more about adolescence anyway. (If one is writing about one's insane teenage passion for Mick Jagger, and sharing it with one's equally besotted friends, Mick Jagger is not really the point, see? Even if one does then meet him in a later essay.) Which is refreshing. Not much that feels like chick lit passes the Alison Bechdel movie rule. (said rule, approx: A movie isn't worth watching unless it includes a) at least two women who b) talk to each other about c) something other than men. While I admit to many exceptions, it's kind of disturbing how few movies actually pass the test.)
(210/200)
Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman
Book reviews are my truest brain candy, and I think tangent-sprouting book reviews of childhood favorites reread later on are even BETTER brain candy. Not the first time I've seen this done, but it makes me glow to think of there being a regular column (there's that American Scholar rag again) devoted to such. Very enjoyable.
(211/200)
Princess in Love, by Meg Cabot, read by Ann Hathaway (unabridged audiobook)
Fluffy fluffy fluff. Ann Hathaway continues to rock my socks, conveying with great warmth and accuracy the author's portrait of a dorky, intelligent, slightly self-absorbed, warm-hearted, self-deprecating New York teenager, and doing a great job on the other character voices as well. (My Hathaway love has only increased now that I've started listening to the next volume in the series, which has a different narrator. The new narrator, not to put too fine a point on it, sucks.)
(212/200)
Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, by Susan Ann Gilman
I read this last month, but left it out of previous posts. Oops. Anyway. I bought this book to give to my sister for her plane trip to Thailand, as she had specifically requested some light reading. After 3 pages, I realized my sister would hate this book, due to the author's style, not content. She writes the kind of sentences where one thing gets heaped on after another after another, creating an avalance of specifics that then tumble into your lap like a puppy who really really really wants you to like her. (hee, hee, I love mixing my metaphors like that.) My sister has little patience for this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, find it maximally endearing when done well. So I loved this book. Also pleasing because very very few of the autobiographical essays within have anything to do with men, and the few that do are really more about adolescence anyway. (If one is writing about one's insane teenage passion for Mick Jagger, and sharing it with one's equally besotted friends, Mick Jagger is not really the point, see? Even if one does then meet him in a later essay.) Which is refreshing. Not much that feels like chick lit passes the Alison Bechdel movie rule. (said rule, approx: A movie isn't worth watching unless it includes a) at least two women who b) talk to each other about c) something other than men. While I admit to many exceptions, it's kind of disturbing how few movies actually pass the test.)
(210/200)
Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman
Book reviews are my truest brain candy, and I think tangent-sprouting book reviews of childhood favorites reread later on are even BETTER brain candy. Not the first time I've seen this done, but it makes me glow to think of there being a regular column (there's that American Scholar rag again) devoted to such. Very enjoyable.
(211/200)
Princess in Love, by Meg Cabot, read by Ann Hathaway (unabridged audiobook)
Fluffy fluffy fluff. Ann Hathaway continues to rock my socks, conveying with great warmth and accuracy the author's portrait of a dorky, intelligent, slightly self-absorbed, warm-hearted, self-deprecating New York teenager, and doing a great job on the other character voices as well. (My Hathaway love has only increased now that I've started listening to the next volume in the series, which has a different narrator. The new narrator, not to put too fine a point on it, sucks.)
(212/200)
